MRS Communications (2015), 5, 453–462 © Materials Research Society, 2015. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. doi:10.1557/mrc.2015.51 Prospective Article Vibrant times for mechanical metamaterials Johan Christensen, DTU Fotonik, Department of Photonics Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, DK-2800 Kongens Lyngby, Denmark Muamer Kadic and Martin Wegener, Institute of Applied Physics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), D-76128 Karlsruhe, Germany Oliver Kraft, Institute for Applied Materials, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), D-76128 Karlsruhe, Germany Martin Wegener, Institute of Nanotechnology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), D-76021 Karlsruhe, Germany Address all correspondence to Johan Christensen at
[email protected] (Received 15 May 2015; accepted 22 June 2015) Abstract Metamaterials are man-made designer matter that obtains its unusual effective properties by structure rather than chemistry. Building upon the success of electromagnetic and acoustic metamaterials, researchers working on mechanical metamaterials strive at obtaining extraordinary or extreme elasticity tensors and mass-density tensors to thereby mold static stress fields or the flow of longitudinal/transverse elastic vibrations in unprecedented ways. In this prospective paper, we focus on recent advances and remaining challenges in this emerging field. Examples are ultralight-weight, negative mass density, negative modulus, pentamode, anisotropic mass density, Origami, nonlinear, bistable, and repro- grammable mechanical metamaterials. Introduction discussed the possibility of backward waves in vibrating elastic Stone Age, Copper Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age: We name the plates.[1] For a backward wave, mechanical energy and phase eras of mankind after mechanical materials.