Overview

• NC State researchers, with a collaborator at the University of Pennsylvania, report the work in Nature Materials with support from National Science Foundation grants.
• The freestanding unit is cut from a parallelogram polymer sheet into parallel ribbons joined at top and bottom, then closed to form a lantern-like 3D geometry.
• The base structure is bistable and variants become multistable, including a design with four distinct stable states controlled by compression, twist, or both.
• Remote magnetic actuation drove prototype demonstrations, including a gentle gripper for fish, a water-flow filter that opens and closes, and a device that rapidly opens a collapsed tube.
• A mathematical model links geometric angles to shape, stability, and stored energy, enabling programmed performance and pointing to scalable metamaterial and robotic assemblies.