A new publication in Nature Materials by COMPASS researchers Xiaoming Mao (University of Michigan) and Qian Chen (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) offers a breakthrough in visualizing and understanding the dynamics of nanoscale mechanical metamaterials.
Using liquid-phase electron microscopy, the team observed phonon vibrations in gold nanoparticle lattices, enabling measurement of properties like phonon band structures and nanoscale spring constants—information previously difficult to capture at this scale.
Their findings bridge the gap between mechanical metamaterial principles and colloidal self-assembly, revealing how solution-processible, reconfigurable nanostructures can be engineered with highly specific mechanical functions.
This multi-institutional effort combined theoretical modeling, experimental techniques, and machine learning-accelerated simulations to provide a new design framework with implications for shock absorption, acoustic control, and information technology.