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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 3, 2025

4D Printed Bifurcated Stents with Kirigami-Inspired Structures

4D Printed Bifurcated Stents with Kirigami-Inspired Structures

Published on: July 25, 2019

Diffusive kinks turn kirigami into machines.

Shahram Janbaz¹, Corentin Coulais²

¹Institute of Physics, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Nature Communications

|February 10, 2024

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Researchers discovered propagating kinks in dissipative kirigami, mimicking biological folding. These kinks enable machine-like functions like sensing and object manipulation.

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Area of Science:

Materials Science
Mechanical Engineering
Soft Robotics

Background:

Kinks delineate configuration boundaries in materials.
In mechanical metamaterials, kinks enable logic, shape-changing, and locomotion.
Previously, kink propagation relied on inertia or external loads.

Purpose of the Study:

To discover propagating kinks in purely dissipative kirigami.
To investigate shape-changing behaviors in viscoelastic kirigami under varying stretch rates.
To explore the potential of these kinks for machine-like functionalities.

Main Methods:

Fabrication of kirigami structures with viscoelastic properties.
Controlled stretching experiments at different rates.
Observation and analysis of snapping instabilities and kink propagation dynamics.

Main Results:

Discovery of propagating diffusive kinks in dissipative kirigami.
Demonstration of kirigami snapping between textures when stretched rapidly and held.
Kink propagation sequence mimicking biological folding (e.g., Mimosa Pudica).

Conclusions:

Propagating kinks can emerge in purely dissipative kirigami.
Viscoelastic kirigami exhibits texture-switching instabilities.
Diffusive kinks offer potential for sensing, shape morphing, and object manipulation.