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Structures that significantly and rapidly change their shapes and sizes upon external stimuli have widespread applications in a diversity of areas. The ability to miniaturize these deployable and morphable structures is essential for applications in fields that require high-spatial resolution or minimal invasiveness, such as biomechanics sensing, surgery, and biopsy. Despite intensive studies on the actuation mechanisms and material/structure strategies, it remains challenging to realize deployable and morphable structures in high-performance inorganic materials at small scales (e.g., several millimeters, comparable to the feature size of many biological tissues). The difficulty in integrating actuation materials increases as the size scales down, and many types of actuation forces become too small compared to the structure rigidity at millimeter scales. Here, we present schemes of electromagnetic actuation and design strategies to overcome this challenge, by exploiting the mechanics-guided three-dimensional (3D) assembly to enable integration of current-carrying metallic or magnetic films into millimeter-scale structures that generate controlled Lorentz forces or magnetic forces under an external magnetic field. Tailored designs guided by quantitative modeling and developed scaling laws allow formation of low-rigidity 3D architectures that deform significantly, reversibly, and rapidly by remotely controlled electromagnetic actuation. Reconfigurable mesostructures with multiple stable states can be also achieved, in which distinct 3D configurations are maintained after removal of the magnetic field. Demonstration of a functional device that combines the deep and shallow sensing for simultaneous measurements of thermal conductivities in bilayer films suggests the promising potential of the proposed strategy toward multimodal sensing of biomedical signals.

Techniques for forming sophisticated, 3D mesostructures in advanced, functional materials are of rapidly growing interest, owing to their potential uses across a broad range of fundamental and applied areas of application. Recently developed approaches to 3D assembly that rely on controlled buckling mechanics serve as versatile routes to 3D mesostructures in a diverse range of high-quality materials and length scales of relevance for 3D microsystems with unusual function and/or enhanced performance. Nonlinear buckling and delamination behaviors in materials that combine both weak and strong interfaces are foundational to the assembly process, but they can be difficult to control, especially for complex geometries. This paper presents theoretical and experimental studies of the fundamental aspects of adhesion and delamination in this context. By quantifying the effects of various essential parameters on these processes, we establish general design diagrams for different material systems, taking into account 4 dominant delamination states (wrinkling, partial delamination of the weak interface, full delamination of the weak interface, and partial delamination of the strong interface). These diagrams provide guidelines for the selection of engineering parameters that avoid interface-related failure, as demonstrated by a series of examples in 3D helical mesostructures and mesostructures that are reconfigurable based on the control of loading-path trajectories. Three-dimensional micromechanical resonators with frequencies that can be selected between 2 distinct values serve as demonstrative examples.

The emergence of stretchable electronic technology has led to the development of many industries and facilitated many unprecedented applications, owing to its ability to bear various deformations. However, conventional solid elastomer substrates and encapsulation can severely restrict the free motion and deformation of patterned interconnects, leading to potential mechanical failures and electrical breakdowns. To address this issue, we propose a design strategy of porous elastomer substrate and encapsulation to improve the stretchability of serpentine interconnects in island-bridge structures. The serpentine interconnects are fully bonded to the elastomer substrate, while segments above circular pores remain suspended, allowing for free deformation and a substantial improvement in elastic stretchability compared to the solid substrates. The pores ensure unimpeded interconnect deformations, and moderate porosity provides support while maintaining the initial planar state. Compared to conventional solid configurations, finite element analysis (FEA) demonstrates a substantial enhancement of elastic stretchability (e.g. ≈9 times without encapsulation and ≈ 7 times with encapsulation). Uniaxial cyclic loading fatigue experiments validate the enhanced elastic stretchability, indicating the mechanical stability of the porous design. With its intrinsic advantages in permeability, the proposed strategy has the potential to offer insightful inspiration and novel concepts for advancing the field of stretchable inorganic electronics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The manufacture of 3D mesostructures is receiving rapidly increasing attention, because of the fundamental significance and practical applications across wide-ranging areas. The recently developed approach of buckling-guided assembly allows deterministic formation of complex 3D mesostructures in a broad set of functional materials, with feature sizes spanning nanoscale to centimeter-scale. Previous studies mostly exploited mechanically controlled assembly platforms using elastomer substrates, which limits the capabilities to achieve on-demand local assembly, and to reshape assembled mesostructures into distinct 3D configurations. This work introduces a set of design concepts and assembly strategies to utilize dielectric elastomer actuators as powerful platforms for the electro-mechanically controlled 3D assembly. Capabilities of sequential, local loading with desired strain distributions allow access to precisely tailored 3D mesostructures that can be reshaped into distinct geometries, as demonstrated by experimental and theoretical studies of ∼30 examples. A reconfigurable inductive–capacitive radio-frequency circuit consisting of morphable 3D capacitors serves as an application example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]