Micro-lattice and nano-lattice structures are an exciting class of materials with better strength-to-weight and stiffness-to-weight ratios than bulk solids. Many designs and additive-manufacturing approaches (i.e., 3D printing) have emerged recently for creating such materials, with the goal of fabricating commercially available products with optimized mechanical, thermal, acoustic, and electrical properties for biomedical, aerospace, and several other applications. This National Science Foundation Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future (DMREF) grant supports development of novel approaches to design a new class of disordered lattice materials that are inspired by the special transport properties, e.g., heat transfer and diffusion, of so-called “hyperuniform” structures. Hyperuniform materials may nominally be described as materials with minimal density variation as the length scale increases. They arise naturally in biological and chemical systems and can be designed through numerical methods. Numerous studies have demonstrated that such systems facilitate efficient transport behavior with minimal attenuation while also possessing nearly optimal effective elastic stiffness and material fracture suppression.

• C. Obrero, M. Tirfe, C. Lee, S. Saptarshi, C. Rock, K. E. Daniels, K. A. Newhall. Electrical transport in tunably-disordered metamaterials. Physical Review E 112: 035505 (2025) [Paper] [Preprint]
• C. E. Maher, K. A. Newhall. Characterizing the hyperuniformity of disordered network metamaterials Physical Review E 111: 065420 (2025) [Paper] [Preprint]
• C. Wang, C. E. Maher, K. A. Newhall. Effect of Local Topological Changes on Resistance in Tunably-Disordered Networks. Physical Review E (in press) [Paper] [Preprint]
• K. E. Daniels, C. E. Maher, K. A. Newhall, M. A. Porter, C. D. Rock. Comparing dragonfly wings to jars of marbles through the lens of hyperuniformity. Frontiers for Young Minds (in press) [Preprint]
• J. V. Raj, X. Sun, C. E. Maher, K. A. Newhall, M. A. Porter. Local geometric and transport properties of networks that are generated from hyperuniform point patterns. [Preprint]
• C. E. Maher, J. L. Marzuola, K. A. Newhall. Probing the influence of topological and geometric disorder on the spectrum of the differential Laplacian operator on networks. [Preprint]
• K. Moody, M. Li, C. E. Maher, K. Lee, T. Horn, K. Newhall, R. Hurley, K. Daniels, C. Rock. A Methodology for Manufacturing 3D Disordered Metamaterials Using Laser Powder Bed Fusion from Granular Packings and Hyperuniform Point Clouds. [Preprint]
• K. Lee, C. E. Maher, K. A. Newhall, R. C. Hurley. Mechanism of Band Gap Formation in Beam Networks. [Preprint]
• K. Moody, C. E. Maher, B. Gwalani, and C. Rock. Characteristics of Immiscible Alloy Systems Using Advanced Manufacturing Processes and Spatial Statistics in Proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Superalloy 718 and Derivatives, E. A. Ott et al. (eds.). (The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society, 2026) [Proceedings]

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