Ultrathin Deformable Materials and Protective Coatings Bio-inspired by Scaled Skin

非技术：该奖项由科罗拉多大学博尔德分校材料研究部的生物材料项目颁发，由土木工程、机械和制造创新部门(ENG)的材料力学项目共同资助。天然材料和人造材料通常被设计成执行相同的功能，例如结构支撑、坚固、保护或轻便。因此，大自然是工程材料的新设计和替代设计的重要灵感来源，甚至是柔性/可拉伸电子设备等尖端技术的灵感来源。自然界中的鳞片皮肤具有显著的机械性能，包括顺应性、抗渗透性和轻量化，所有这些都是在超薄的膜结构中实现的。该项目将研究鳞片和鳞片皮肤的机理，以设计和微制造一种新的生物灵感材料，作为一种可变形、抗损伤和坚固的保护涂层。由此产生的人工缩放皮肤将是超薄、轻便、透明的，并且对机械变形(穿孔、弯曲、拉伸和压缩)具有很强的耐受性，使其在广泛的应用中具有吸引力。作为这些努力的一部分，将开发与科罗拉多大学扫描电子显微镜(SEM)设施的远程互动课程，并将在科罗拉多州西部农村社区的高中实施。技术：鳞片皮肤的机械性能使其作为柔性和可拉伸工程材料的保护层具有吸引力，在这种材料中，工程鳞片皮肤将能够在所施加的变形过程中共面覆盖基材，并提供对刺穿或过度弯曲、扭曲或拉伸的抵抗。现代的人造鳞片皮肤的设计和实现，虽然分享了一些机制，复制了天然材料的一些性能特征，但由于对这类系统的基本机理的了解有限，并没有实现系统的仿生技术转移。该项目的目标是利用一套完整的实验和新颖的多尺度计算方法来设计、制造和表征一种工程化的可缩放皮肤材料。该项目将导致(I)具有与自然界观察到的力学相当的力学的人工鳞片皮肤的设计原则，(Ii)从微尺度结构生产人造鳞片和鳞片皮肤的微制造技术，以及(Iii)对人工鳞片皮肤响应机械变形的行为的直接测量和计算建模。人工缩放皮肤将作为一种工程材料独特地定位，通过提供增强的机械性能、坚固性和耐用性以及透明度，来覆盖和保护柔性/可拉伸电子设备，从而使其能够应用于专门的柔性电子设备，如表面安装的触觉探头和植入式生物传感器。这些努力为吸引和培训材料计算设计、微制造和实验/计算力学方面的工程师提供了一个平台。

Non-Technical: This award by the Biomaterials program in the Division of Materials Research to University of Colorado, Boulder, is co-funded by the Mechanics of Materials program in the Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation (ENG). Natural and human-made materials are often designed to perform the same functions, for example for structural support, robustness, protection, or being lightweight. Nature is therefore a significant source of inspiration for new and alternative designs for engineered materials, even for cutting-edge technologies such as flexible/stretchable electronics. Scaled skins in nature have remarkable mechanical properties including being compliant, resistant to penetration, and lightweight, all of which is achieved within an ultrathin membrane structure. This project will study the mechanics in scales and scaled skins in order to design and microfabricate a new bio-inspired material that can serve as a deformable, damage resistant, and robust protective coating. The resulting artificial scaled skins will be ultrathin, lightweight, transparent, and robust to mechanical deformations (puncture, bending, stretching, and compression) making them attractive for a wide range of applications. As part of these efforts, remote interactive sessions with the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) facilities at the University of Colorado will be developed and will be implemented in the high schools of rural communities in western Colorado. Technical: The mechanical behavior of scaled skin makes it attractive for application as a protective coating on flexible and stretchable engineered materials, in which an 'engineered scaled skin' will be able to conformally cover the substrate throughout the applied deformations and provide resistance to puncture or excessive bending, twisting, or stretching. Modern designs and implementations of human-made scaled skins, although sharing some mechanisms and duplicating some performance features of natural materials, have not achieved a systematic biomimetic transfer-of-technology because of a limited understanding of the fundamental mechanics in such systems. The objective of this project is to design, fabricate, and characterize an engineered scaled skin material using an integrated set of experiments and novel multiscale computational methods. This project will lead to (i) design principles for artificial scaled skins with mechanics comparable to those observed in nature, (ii) microfabrication techniques to produce artificial scales and scaled skins from microscale structures, and (iii) direct measurements and computational modeling of the behavior of the artificial scaled skins in response to mechanical deformation. Artificial scaled skins will be uniquely positioned as an engineered material for coating and protecting flexible/stretchable electronic devices by providing enhanced mechanical properties, robustness and durability, and transparency, thus enabling application on specialized flexible electronics such as surface mounted tactile probes and implantable bio-sensors. These efforts provide a platform to attract and train engineers in the computational design of materials, microfabrication, and experimental/computational mechanics.