BBC News wrote a story on our work on bistable auxetics presented at the APS march meeting in Baltimore:

ISLAMIC ART INSPIRES STRETCHY, SWITCHABLE MATERIALS
A new set of “metamaterials” has been created based on intricate, repeating patterns found in Islamic art. Metamaterials are engineered to have properties that don’t occur naturally, such as getting wider when stretched instead of just longer and thinner. These perforated rubber sheets made by a Canadian team do just that – and then remain stable in their expanded state until they are squeezed back again. Such designs could help make expandable stents or spacecraft components. “In conventional materials, when you pull in one direction it will contract in other directions,” said Ahmad Rafsanjani, from McGill University in Montreal. “But with ‘auxetic’ materials, due to their internal architecture, when you pull in one direction they expand in the lateral direction.” He was speaking to journalists at the American Physical Society’s March Meeting.
Read the full article here and listen to Ahmad’s interview with BBC Newshour as well as the report from The Newsroom.

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