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Edited by Thomas E. Mallouk, University of Pennsylvania, University Park, PA, and approved September 21, 2020 (received for review July 2, 2020)
Significance
Molecular ferroelectrics, which show the ability to switch the electromechanical activity by an external electric field, establish the basis for mechanical metamaterial technologies. Despite their theoretical promise, such mechanical metamaterials remain hindered by the lack of adaptive stimuli-responsive materials which can be effectively tuned “on demand” across time and length scales. Here, we unravel a printable mechanical metamaterial of imidazolium perchlorate with superior electromechanical coupling and reprogrammable stiffness. We propose a continuous rapid three-dimensional (3D) printing technique which can reduce the manufacturing time of ferroelectrics from hours down to minutes. The printed molecular ferroelectric metamaterial structure is then shown to enable a tunable-frequency vibration-isolating architecture. This study paves the way for rationally designed 3D-printable molecular ferroelectric metamaterials.
Abstract
Molecular ferroelectrics combine electromechanical coupling and electric polarizabilities, offering immense promise in stimuli-dependent metamaterials. Despite such promise, current physical realizations of mechanical metamaterials remain hindered by the lack of rapid-prototyping ferroelectric metamaterial structures. Here, we present a continuous rapid printing strategy for the volumetric deposition of water-soluble molecular ferroelectric metamaterials with precise spatial control in virtually any three-dimensional (3D) geometry by means of an electric-field–assisted additive manufacturing. We demonstrate a scaffold-supported ferroelectric crystalline lattice that enables self-healing and a reprogrammable stiffness for dynamic tuning of mechanical metamaterials with a long lifetime and sustainability. A molecular ferroelectric architecture with resonant inclusions then exhibits adaptive mitigation of incident vibroacoustic dynamic loads via an electrically tunable subwavelength-frequency band gap. The findings shown here pave the way for the versatile additive manufacturing of molecular ferroelectric metamaterials.
- molecular ferroelectrics
- mechanical metamaterials
- hydrogel
- additive manufacturing
- three-dimensional printing
Footnotes
↵1Y.H., Z.G., and A.R. contributed equally to this work.
- ↵2To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: chizhou{at}buffalo.edu, mnouh{at}buffalo.edu, or shenren{at}buffalo.edu.
Author contributions: Y.H., Z.G., A.R., C.Z., M.N., and S.R. designed research; Y.H., Z.G., A.R., and T.Z. performed research; Y.H., Z.G., A.R., C.L., T.Z., and J.C.G. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; Y.H., Z.G., A.R., T.Z., C.Z., and M.N. analyzed data; and Y.H., Z.G., A.R., T.Z., S.K., J.C.G., C.Z., M.N., and S.R. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no competing interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
This article contains supporting information online at https://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.2013934117/-/DCSupplemental.
Data Availability.
All study data are included in the article and SI Appendix.
Published under the PNAS license.
References
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A 3D-printed molecular ferroelectric metamaterial
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