Engineering Responsive, Tunable, and Multifunctional Composites.

摘要

In recent years, engineering origami, inspired by paper art, is gaining traction in the study of reconfigurability because of its robustness as a mechanical system. These mechanical systems enable functional properties and can be extended to multiple length scales for a range of applications, including biomedicine, sensing, and smart materials. Here we explore two key strategies to enable new materials designs for responsiveness and tunable properties. The first deals with how we can combine desirable properties onto a single material, and the second deals with how the material is arranged spatially.;In this work, we focus on a layer-by-layer (LBL) assembled composite technique, which provides nanoscale control and mechanically robust composites suitable for reversible responsive systems. In the first part of the work inkjet printing is used produce these composites rapidly and to dictate spatial arrangement. We demonstrate combining LBL with inkjet printing to introduce mechanical motion in a solid nanocomposite system. Next we show using the same materials system and technique to modulate surface properties by inkjet LBL on nanopillar arrays, and propose its application in breath-activated authentication. The final part of the study focuses on an extension of the origami approach to engineer stretchability in conductive composites. Kirigami, the art of paper cutting, controls the deformation within a composite, which in turn gives us control over the strain-property relationship. The reconfigurability enabled by kirigami can also be used for tunable applications. We show that the combination of bottom-up and top-down patterning of composite materials demonstrates new opportunities in materials engineering, and suggest future directions in the field of engineering origami and kirigami.