Architected Materials: Synthesis, characterization, modeling and optimal design
February 2018 
Submission deadline: July 1, 2017

Click here to read submission instructions

Architected materials are multi-phase and cellular materials in which the topological distribution of the phases is carefully controlled and optimized. Nearly two decades of research has resulted in the identification of a number of topologically simple, easy to fabricate, well established topologies, which have been optimized for specific stiffness and strength, impact and blast protection, sound absorption, wave dispersion, active cooling and combinations thereof. 

Over the past few years, dramatic advances in processing techniques, including polymer-based templating (e.g., stereolithography, photopolymer waveguide prototyping, two-photon polymerization) and direct single- or multi-material formation (e.g., direct laser sintering, deformed metal lattices, 3D weaving and knitting), have enabled fabrication of new architected materials with arbitrarily complex architectures and remarkably precise control over the geometric arrangement of solid phases and voids from the nanometer to the centimeter scale. 

The ordered, topologically complex nature of these materials and the degree of precision with which their features can now be defined suggests the development of new multi-physics multi-scale modeling tools that can enable optimal design.  The result is efficient multi-scale cellular materials with unprecedented ranges of density, stiffness, strength, energy absorption, porosity/permeability, chemical reactivity, wave/matter interaction and other multifunctional properties, which promise dramatic advances across important technology areas such as lightweight structures, functional coatings, bio-scaffolds, catalyst supports, photonic/phononic systems and other applications.  

Topics addressed in this focus issue will include (but not be limited to): 

• Advances in solid free-form manufacturing (e.g. stereolithography, SLS, SLA, new direct write techniques, etc.) 
• Novel parallel and batch processing techniques for scalable manufacturing
• 3D weaving, knitting and other fiber forms/preforms
• Scalable self-assembly techniques
• Optimization of architectural topology (structure-to-property relations)
• Inverse methods (function-to-structure)
• Multi-scale testing (e.g. linking constituent, topological and bulk properties)
• 3D tomography and related techniques
• Modeling of non-linear mechanical/physical response
• Applications of optimal architected materials

Guest Editors

Lorenzo Valdevit, University of California, Irvine, USA
Katia Bertoldi, Harvard University, USA
Christopher Spadaccini, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA
Jamie Guest, Johns Hopkins University, USA

Manuscript Submission

To be considered for this issue, new and previously unpublished results significant to the development of this field should be presented. The manuscripts must be submitted via the JMR electronic submission system by July 1, 2017. Manuscripts submitted after this deadline will not be considered for the issue due to time constraints on the review process. Submission instructions may be found at here. Please select “Focus issue: Architected Materials: Synthesis, Characterization, Modeling and Optimal Design” as the manuscript type. Note our manuscript submission minimum length of 6,000 words. All manuscripts will be reviewed in a normal but expedited fashion. Papers submitted by the deadline and subsequently accepted will be published in the Focus Issue. Other manuscripts that are acceptable but cannot be included in the issue will be scheduled for publication in a subsequent issue of JMR.

Please contact jmr@mrs.org for any questions.