Muscles act as metamaterials due to collective behavior, physicists show
Friday, June 21, 2013 - 08:00
in Physics & Chemistry
(Phys.org) —Metamaterials are defined as artificial materials that have been engineered to have unusual properties that are not found in nature. For instance, ordinary materials (say, a rubber band) that are under tension expand in the direction of that tension, while metamaterials may contract, exhibiting "negative stiffness" while still remaining stable. An idea of how this could work in principle was suggested in a 1991 Nature paper by Cohen and Horowitz, and in a 2012 Nature Materials paper by Nicolaou and Motter this idea was implemented to construct an extended material that contracts when tensioned (pulled) or expands when compressed (pushed).