2025/02/24 by Savannah Gowen, Elina Ghimire, Gowen, Savannah D. +9
Engineering · #Advanced Materials and Mechanics #Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn) #FOS: Physical sciences #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Modular Robots and Swarm Intelligence #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #Structural Analysis and Optimization
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2502.17238
openalex publication_date 2025/02/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Training has emerged as a promising materials design technique in which function can be acheived through repeated physical modification of an existing material rather than by direct chemical functionalization, cutting or reprocessing. This work investigates both the ability to train for function and then to erase that function on-demand in macroscopic metamaterials made from liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs). We first show that the Poisson's ratio of these disordered arrays can be tuned via directed aging to induce an auxetic response. We then show that the arrays can be reset and re-trained for another local mechanical function, allostery, thus demonstrating pluripotent functionality.