Metamaterials stop copying one unit cell

Conventional mechanical metamaterials repeat a regular unit cell. Researchers at MIT, Northeastern and partner institutions instead borrowed network science to design 'scale-rich' structures whose beam lengths, thicknesses and connection counts follow power-law distributions across orders of magnitude, controlled by only two parameters. They printed centimetre- and micrometre-scale samples using vat photopolymerization and two-photon lithography. Experiments and simulations showed high energy absorption, dynamic-load dissipation, tunable directional elasticity and programmable elastic-wave control. Helmets, packaging and armour are possible uses, but the evidence is still dominated by polymer samples, with scalable manufacturing, durability and real-impact testing unresolved.