Material design and structure-property relationships

“Structure in Nature is a Strategy for Design” was a powerful book of the 1970s, in which architect Peter Pearce advocated the use of geometric designs inspired by nature as motifs for design and architecture. This book continues to be an excellent read, and one that inspires my research into materials microstructure design, for two reasons:

  1. Peter Pearce advocates structures in nature as patterns for design, as a paradigm for materials science and engineering (and architecture).
  2. He explores methodically the ‘geometric possibilities’, enumerating where possible large ranges of structural models within a variety of geometric classes to look for suitable, or optimal, design patterns.

I consider that this two-fold approach (inspiration from nature and geometric enumeration) is a powerful approach for materials microstructure or nanostructure design. This is particularly true considering the huge advances in 3D printing techniques at all scales, and considering that computational materials science provides comprehensive tools for digital analysis of materials properties, including topological optimisation methods.

Across a number of topics in materials science, I have worked on identifying microstructure designs with a particular functionality, on structure-property relationships for both ordered and disordered materials, and on classes of geometries that lend themselves to applications in materials science.

Nanofabricated photonic materials design based on Gyroid materials and multi-network Gyroid materials

Designs for free-form fabrication bone scaffolds with tunable mechanical / transport properties

Auxetic (negative Poisson’s ratio) material designs

Structure-property relationship for bicontinuous polymer blend solar cells

Structure-property relationships for disordered materials

Some overview articles

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