Ultralight Metallic Microlattices
Abstract
Ultralight (<10 milligrams per cubic centimeter) cellular materials are desirable for thermal insulation; battery electrodes; catalyst supports; and acoustic, vibration, or shock energy damping. We present ultralight materials based on periodic hollow-tube microlattices. These materials are fabricated by starting with a template formed by self-propagating photopolymer waveguide prototyping, coating the template by electroless nickel plating, and subsequently etching away the template. The resulting metallic microlattices exhibit densities ρ ≥ 0.9 milligram per cubic centimeter, complete recovery after compression exceeding 50% strain, and energy absorption similar to elastomers. Young's modulus E scales with density as E ~ ρ^2, in contrast to the E ~ ρ^3 scaling observed for ultralight aerogels and carbon nanotube foams with stochastic architecture. We attribute these properties to structural hierarchy at the nanometer, micrometer, and millimeter scales.
Additional Information
© 2011 American Association for the Advancement of Science. Received for publication 25 July 2011; Accepted for publication 12 October 2011. The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under the Materials with Controlled Microstructural Architecture program managed by J. Goldwasser (contract no. W91CRB-10-0305) and thank J. W. Hutchinson and C. S. Roper for useful discussions. A patent application regarding the structure and formation process of the ultralight microlattices has been submitted to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The polymer waveguide process has been patented (U.S. Patent 7,382,959, U.S. Patent 7,653,279, and U.S. Patent 8,017,193), but the template can be fabricated in other ways.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 28347
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20111207-112803529
- W91CRB-10-0305
- Army Research Office (ARO)
- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
- Created
-
2011-12-09Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Kavli Nanoscience Institute