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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Abstract: Recently, we introduced the concept of plate mechanical metamaterials—cellular plates with carefully controlled periodic geometry and unique mechanical properties—as well as its initial realization in the form of freestanding corrugated plates made out of an ultrathin film. We used atomic layer deposition (ALD) and microfabrication techniques to make robust plates out of a single continuous ALD layer with cm-scale lateral dimensions and thicknesses between 25 and 100 nm, creating the thinnest freestanding plates that can be picked up by hand. We also fabricated and characterized nanocardboard - plate metamaterials made from multiple layers of nanoscale thickness, whose geometry and properties are reminiscent of honeycomb sandwich plates or corrugated paper cardboard. Ultralow weight, mechanical robustness, thermal insulation, as well as chemical and thermal stability of alumina make plate metamaterials attractive for numerous applications, including structural elements in flying microrobots and interstellar light sails, high-temperature thermal insulation in energy converters, photophoretic levitation, as well as ultrathin sensors and resonators. I will briefly discuss our experimental progress on all these applications, including demonstrations of extremely robust thermal insulators that can sustain a temperature difference of ~1000 K across a micron-scale gap, hollow AFM cantilevers that offer greatly enhanced sensitivity and data acquisition rates, and macroscopic plates that levitate when illuminated by light.
Bio: Igor Bargatin received his undergraduate degree in theoretical physics from the Lomonosov Moscow State University, and a Ph.D. degree in physics and electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. After postdoctoral appointments at LETI/Minatec (Grenoble, France) and Stanford University, he became the Class of 1965 Term Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics (MEAM), University of Pennsylvania. Prof. Bargatin’s research interests are focused on micro- and nanomechanical structures for new applications in energy conversion, ultra-lightweight materials, and new mechanisms of levitation. He is a recent recipient of the NSF CAREER award and the Penn Engineering teaching award.
