MEAM Seminar: “Additive Manufacturing and Architected Materials”

Material properties are governed by the chemical composition and spatial arrangement of constituent elements. Over the past decade, the field of architected materials has sought to design, fabricate, and demonstrate materials with performance that is fundamentally controlled by geometry at multiple length-scales rather than chemical composition alone. There have been many advancements ranging from the maturation of additive manufacturing technologies which can be used to realize these materials, to inverse design methods such as topology optimization, and even includes unique new material feedstocks which make up the structures. This presentation will touch on all aspects of the architected materials realization process as well as evaluate performance of some of those materials. Specifically, we have demonstrated designer properties of these architected materials in polymers, metals, ceramics and combinations thereof. In addition to novel properties such as ultra-stiff lightweight materials, negative stiffness, and negative thermal expansion, I will present multifunctional architected materials with energy storage capability and architectures that respond to external fields. Many of these architected materials derived from advanced design and optimization methods which we have been developing and were fabricated with custom additive manufacturing techniques. These include projection microstereolithography (PµSL), direct ink writing (DIW), electrophoretic deposition (EPD), volumetric additive manufacturing (VAM), computed axial lithography (CAL), and diode-based additive manufacturing (DiAM) to name a few. New materials including graphene aerogel, carbon fiber composites, and printed glass will also be touched upon.