Metabot: Metamaterial stretches and moves in the magnetic field
Metabots are robots and a kind of composite material at the same time. It develops a wide range of properties. For example, metabots can dance.
Metabots move in a controlled magnetic field.
Scientists at Princeton University have developed a metamaterial that can be expanded, change its shape and move via an external magnetic field. The properties of the material are not based on its chemical composition, but on its physical structure.
The material, called Metabot by the Princeton researchers, is a mixture of material and robot. It consists of basic plastics and specially developed magnetic composites, so it is not a material that develops its properties from its chemical composition. Rather, it is a composite of different materials. Metabot is therefore a modular conglomerate of many reconfigurable unit cells that are mirror images of each other. This mirroring, which is called chirality, enables various types of behavior. One of them is that the material can be moved remotely via an external magnetic field and changes its shape, the researchers write in the study “Modular chiral origami metamaterials”, which has been published in Nature.
Metabots
The scientists used the material to build a cylindrical structure based on the Japanese art of origami folding. Two tubes that can be twisted in opposite directions, known as Kresling patterns, were joined to form a cylinder. By applying an external magnetic field, the structure could be altered so that it expands, shrinks and can be moved in different directions. The latter is particularly noteworthy because, according to the researchers, the technology is suitable for transmitting torques remotely, immediately and precisely from a distance.
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The researchers developed further metabots to test various applications. For example, a laser lithography machine was used to create a metabot that is just 100 µm in size. This is only slightly thicker than a human hair. This could be used, for example, to precisely place drugs in the human body under the control of an external magnetic field.
The Princeton scientists also used the metamaterial to develop a heat controller. The heat controller can switch between a light-absorbing dark surface and a reflective surface. In an experiment, the researchers exposed the metamaterial to sunlight. The surface temperature of the material could be regulated simply by switching from 27 °C to 70 °C and vice versa.
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The researchers see a large field of application for the metamaterial. In the future, it could possibly be used to develop physical structures that mimic the performance of logic gates made of transistors in a computer.
(olb)
