Toward Lighter, Stiffer Materials

For hundreds or even thousands of years, humans have developed ever lighter and stronger materials, including alloys, polymers, and composites. Recently, these efforts have been joined by a different approach to lightweight materials: the introduction of carefully engineered open structure into solid materials to create cellular materials (see the figure). On page 1219 of this issue, Cheung and Gershenfeld ( 1 ) present a fabrication method for cellular materials that enables them to reversibly assemble cellular composite materials with tailored properties.