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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Xinwei LiORCiD, Dr Qing Li
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2026 The Author(s). Small published by Wiley-VCH GmbH. Programmable metamaterials that exhibit prescribed mechanical responses and adaptive deformation under external loading are highly desirable for multifunctional engineering applications. However, most existing designs rely on multi-material systems, which pose significant fabrication challenges with conventional additive manufacturing. Inspired by the unique soft-hard heterogeneous architecture of nacre, this study introduces a novel class of dual-phase (DP) metamaterials where spatially encoded soft and hard phases are realized through bending-dominated and stretching-dominated lattice architectures, respectively. By systematically varying the spatial coding patterns of soft-hard phases, representative DP metamaterials are shown to exhibit programmable nonlinear mechanical responses and tailored failure processes, achieved through geometry-based mechanical encoding governed by phase interactions and internal stress redistribution. Notably, the engineered sequenced failure processes and phase-coupling-induced strengthening effects lead to significantly enhanced energy absorption compared with the constituent architectures, while enabling customizable plateau stress. To efficiently explore the vast design space of DP metamaterials, a data-driven framework is then developed to model the relationship between spatial encodings and nonlinear mechanical responses. The trained model enables rapid and accurate inverse design of DP metamaterials matching the complex target responses for multifunctional applications. Overall, this work establishes a new geometry-based strategy for achieving highly programmable mechanical responses in single-material metamaterials.
Author(s): Zhao M, Qiu N, Zhang X, Peng B, Zeng Z, Li X, Li Q
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Small
Year: 2026
Pages: Epub ahead of print
Online publication date: 24/07/2026
Acceptance date: 28/06/2026
Date deposited: 03/08/2026
ISSN (print): 1613-6810
ISSN (electronic): 1613-6829
Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Inc.
URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.74687
DOI: 10.1002/smll.74687
Data Access Statement: The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author.
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