Abstract
Kirigami, a traditional paper cutting art, offers a promising strategy for 2D-to-3D shape morphing through cut-guided deformation. Existing kirigami designs for target 3D curved shapes rely on intricate cut patterns in thin sheets, making the inverse design challenging. Motivated by the Gauss-Bonnet theorem that correlates the geodesic curvature along the boundary with the Gaussian curvature, here, we exploit programming the curvature of cut boundaries rather than the complex cut patterns in kirigami sheets for target 3D curved morphologies through both forward and inverse designs. The strategy largely simplifies the inverse design. Leveraging this strategy, we demonstrate its potential applications as a universal and nondestructive gripper for delicate objects, including live fish, raw egg yolk, and a human hair, as well as dynamically conformable heaters for human knees. This study opens a new avenue to encode boundary curvatures for shape-programing materials with potential applications in soft robotics and wearable devices.
Highlights
Kirigami, a traditional paper cutting art, offers a promising strategy for 2D-to-3D shape morphing through cut-guided deformation
Most studies focus on the local buckling of cut units in a thin sheet patterned with arrays of parallel slits or networked triangular or square cuts etc[8,9,10,11,12,13,15,17,18], generating quasi-3D pop-up structures without global curvatures
Here, we propose a simple strategy of utilizing the boundary curvature of cut edges rather than complex cut patterns to program 3D curved shapes through both forward and inverse designs
Summary
A traditional paper cutting art, offers a promising strategy for 2D-to-3D shape morphing through cut-guided deformation. Programmable shape shifting in different materials and structures was realized at all scales utilizing folding, bending, and buckling[2] These shapeprogrammable materials are attractive for broad applications in programmable machines and robots[3,4], functional biomedical devices[5], and four-dimensional (4D) printing[6,7]. The local heterogeneous deformation among non-periodic tessellated cut units induces global out-of-plane buckling of the 2D kirigami sheets, resulting in the formation of different 3D curved shapes[34,35]. It often requires programming intricate cut patterns and arrangements of non-periodic cut units, making the inverse design and optimization for target 3D shapes complicated and challenging[35,36]. How to utilize the 3D curved shapes in kirigami sheets for functionalities remains largely unexplored[34,35,36]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
