Multifunctional liquid metal lattice materials through hybrid design and manufacturing

Multifunctional lattice materials exhibit functionalities beyond conventional load-bearing usage and are usually fabricated by additive manufacturing. This work introduces a new class of functional lattice materials called liquid metal lattice materials. These lattice materials consist of liquid metals and elastomers organized in a coreshell manner. This hybrid design induces a shape memory effect by harnessing the solid-liquid phase transition of liquid metals. Consequently, several remarkable functionalities are achieved such as recoverable energy absorption, tunable rigidity, and reconfigurable behaviors. These liquid metal lattice materials are fabricated by using a hybrid manufacturing approach, which integrates the 3D printing, vacuum casting, and conformal coating techniques. A variety of lattice structures are presented to demonstrate the capability of this hybrid manufacturing method and the functionalities of liquid metal lattice materials. This new class of lattice materials have promising applications in aerospace, robotics, tunable metamaterials, etc.