Physicist Stefano Martiniani has designed an entirely new class of materials that blurs the line between order and chaos. Called gyromorphs, these metamaterials rely on crystal-like geometric structure and liquidlike randomness to block light from penetrating at any angle.
Physicists thought, structurally speaking, that they could not create such hybrid materials. “But this is evidence that you can, under certain constraints,” says Martiniani, of New York University. He likens the gyromorphs’ disorderliness to a crowd of people. You could see through the crowd if individuals stood still in straight lines, but not if they are clustered together in random groups. But there’s order too: From anywhere you stand in a gyromorph crowd, you’ll see a ring of people at a given distance.
Gyromorphs are a type of metamaterial, a substance with a structure designed to give it properties not found in naturally occurring materials. Metamaterials can control light, sound or other waves, and are often used in smartphones, medical imaging and computers. Martiniani says gyromorphs could be used to make more energy-efficient optical computers, which use light to process and store data.
To design a gyromorph, Martiniani needed to find a way to achieve the perfect structural balance. He turned to FReSCo, a program his lab created that designs molecular structures to meet researchers’ specifications, for help. “We had an algorithm, we gave it an objective, and then it was able to solve that objective, finding a solution that we were not expecting,” he says. “That is the best kind of discovery.”
