Tomorrow is Today

Researchers Design Metamaterial that Stretches When Compressed, Expands When Pulled

Imagine cushions that lift up instead of sinking when you sit on them. Impossible? Not according to a blueprint for new materials with “negative compressibility”: the materials compress when they are pulled and expand when they are pushed.

…Zachary Nicolaou and Adilson Motter of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, have now designed a metamaterial that stretches when compressed, and vice versa, under any circumstances.

“What is interesting is that they study systems that are not responding to a vibration but to a steady applied force,” says John Pendry of Imperial College London. That should be impossible, as any material that behaves this way (stretching when compressed, and vice versa) would be inherently unstable and instantly collapse into a stable state without displaying such behaviour.

Nicolaou and Motter got around this by designing a material with an internal structure that does transition to a stable state, but a state that is more compressed or expanded than the original state.

Their theoretical design involves a row of four “particles” – each made of groups of molecules – that attract each other to varying degrees. The force attracting the two inner particles is weak, so that pulling on the material breaks that bond. “As soon as that happens, the outer particles attract each other more,” says Motter, so overall the material compresses.

If this material is squeezed, though, the two inner particles are brought close enough together to reform the weak bond – and the material can expand.

(via ‘Impossible’ material would stretch when compressed - physics-math - 22 May 2012 - New Scientist)