Thermal Metamaterials with Configurable Mechanical Properties.

Thermal metamaterials are typically achieved by mixing different natural materials to realize effective thermal conductivities (ETCs) that conventional materials do not possess. However, the necessity for multifunctional design of metamaterials, encompassing both thermal and mechanical functionalities, is somewhat overlooked, resulting in the fixation of mechanical properties in thermal metamaterials designed within current research endeavors. Thus far, conventional methods have faced challenges in designing thermal metamaterials with configurable mechanical properties because of intricate inherent relationships among the structural configuration, thermal and mechanical properties in metamaterials. Here, a data-driven approach is proposed to design a thermal metamaterial capable of seamlessly achieving thermal functionalities and harnessing the advantages of microstructural diversity to configure its mechanical properties. The designed metamaterial possesses thermal cloaking functionality while exhibiting exceptional mechanical properties, such as load-bearing capacity, shearing strength, and tensile resistance, thereby affording mechanical protection for the thermal metadevice. The proposed approach can generate numerous distinct inverse design candidate topological functional cells (TFCs), designing thermal metamaterials with dramatic improvements in mechanical properties compared to traditional ones, which sets up a novel paradigm for discovering thermal metamaterials with extraordinary mechanical structures. Furthermore, this approach also paves the way for investigating thermal metamaterials with additional physical properties.