Nanowerk April 4, 2024
Traditionally the building blocks of metamaterials are arranged in fixed positions within a lattice structure. An international team of researchers (USA – Harvard University, Israel) showed that by mixing highly deformable spherical capsules into an incompressible fluid, it is possible to realize a ‘metafluid’ with programmable compressibility, optical behaviour, and viscosity. Experimentally and numerically, they demonstrated that the buckling of the shells endows the fluid with a highly nonlinear behaviour. They harnessed this behaviour to develop smart robotic systems, highly tunable logic gates and optical elements with switchable characteristics. They demonstrated that the collapse of the shells upon buckling led to a large increase in the suspension viscosity in the laminar regime. According to the researchers the metafluid they proposed provides a promising platform for enhancing the functionality of existing fluidic devices by expanding the capabilities of the fluid itself… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Metafluid comprising highly deformable capsules. Credit: Nature, 03 April 2024