The ability to count is a property not often attributed to materials, despite the abundance of memory in materials. Regardless of how a material stores information, it is often difficult to retrieve exactly ‘what’ a material remembers.

This thesis describes how to scale down concepts of macroscopic mechanical metamaterials to the thermal scale using a system of flexibly-linked colloids.

Mechanical metamaterials are carefully engineered materials whose properties are controlled by their structure, not by their composition, which allows using metamaterials to study and control physical effects in detail⁠.

On a structural level, the properties featured by a majority of mechanical metamaterials can be ascribed to the finite number of soft internal degrees-of freedom allowing for low-energy deformations.

We investigate the physics and design of mechanical metamaterial, intricately sculpted materials with properties set by their architecture.

In the traditional theory of linear elasticity, superposition dictates that the response of a material does not depend on the sequence of the applied mechanical actuations.

Mechanical metamaterials are man-made materials which derive their unusual properties from their structure rather than their composition.

In the first part of this thesis we study the geometry of folding patterns.

Researchers from FOM Institute AMOLF, Leiden University and Harvard University made a rubber beam that bends faster when subjected to less pressure. They published their work on 21 July online in Physical Review Letters.

The more complex the object, the harder it is to fold up. Space satellites often need many small motors to fold up an instrument, and people have difficulty simply folding up a roadmap. Physicists from Leiden and Amsterdam have now designed a structure that folds itself up in several steps. Publication…

Mechanical metamaterials have been found to display surprising features, on top of their unusual properties such as shape morphing and programmability. When the materials are a step in size larger, new rules seem to apply. This was discovered by researchers at AMOLF and the universities of Leiden and…

Researchers from Leiden University, the Netherlands, designed a novel metamaterial that buckles on demand. Small structural variations in the material single out regions that buckle selectively under external stress, whereas other regions remain unchanged. The research is published in this week’s Early…

Rigid materials break more easily than floppy ones. This simple observation allows to predict and control the width of cracks. Theoretical understanding of how materials break is useful in for example the production of cars or screens. Publication in PNAS.

Errors are everywhere, and mechanical failures are especially common: buckled grain silos and cracked support columns are, justly, seen as an issue to be avoided.

Research groups in the Biological & Soft Matter Programme unravel mechanisms in biological processes and develop novel bio-inspired soft materials.

Geometric phases lead to a nontrivial interference result when an electron's different quantum mechanical paths choices encircle a magnetic coil in an Aharonov-Bohm experiment.

A specifically designed collection of gears is soft on one end and rigid on the other. These are robust properties of the system that hold even in the presence of manufacturing imperfections. This emerging research area may lead to new ways of designing geared devices like satellite trackers or watches.…

The research groups within the biological, soft and complex systems research area study the physics of a broad range of biological and soft materials. This spans both experimental and theoretical research.

Scientists have developed a material that breaks one of the fundamental principles governing many physical systems. Ordinary materials transmit external forces equally, no matter where the pressure comes from. The newly developed material breaks this rule and could potentially be of interest in soft-robotics…

We study the physics of a broad range of biological and soft materials

This is the physics summer school of Leiden University. It is part of the Leiden Institute of Physics (LION). The summer school is intended for Bachelor (BSc) students in physics. It covers topics from quantum matter and optics, to biological & soft matter physics and cosmology and theoretical physics.…

Are you interested in taking up an extra challenge during your master’s programme? Have you thought about applying for our Summer School programme or are you interested in developing your personal leadership style?

Metamaterials researcher Martin van Hecke was featured in the Dutch science tv show Atlas.

Metamaterials researcher Martin van Hecke has been elected American Physical Society (APS) fellow, an honour exclusive to only half a percent of the society's members.

Researchers at FOM-institute AMOLF and the Leiden Institute of Physics (LION) have developed a rubber rod with strange bending behaviours. Beyond a certain point, it bends more under decreasing pressure. This behaviour doesn’t fit our expectations and does not conform to secular laws that predict the…

Are you interested in taking up an extra challenge during your master’s programme? Have you thought about applying for our Summer School programme or are you interested in developing your personal leadership style?

Are you interested in taking up an extra challenge during your master’s programme? Have you thought about applying for our Summer School programme or are you interested in developing your personal leadership style?

Are you interested in taking up an extra challenge during your master’s programme? Have you thought about applying for our Summer School programme or are you interested in developing your personal leadership style?

Are you interested in taking up an extra challenge during your master’s programme? Have you thought about applying for our Summer School programme or are you interested in developing your personal leadership style?

Are you interested in taking up an extra challenge during your master’s programme? You can develop your persenol leadership style or study abroad. Would you like to experience education at Leiden University up close before starting your master’s? Apply for one of our Summer School programmes.

Are you interested in taking up an extra challenge during your master’s programme? Have you thought about applying for our Summer School programme or are you interested in developing your personal leadership style?

The Physics master offers you a lot of options to create your own programme. There is also the possibility to follow an internship abroad at another university or company or follow courses at another university in the Netherlands or abroad.

Physicist Martin van Hecke receives a 2.5 million euro ERC research grant for research into information processing materials. Starting out with a piece of rubber that can count to ten.

On an apparently normal cube a pattern of hollows and bulges appears when the cube is compressed. A method has been developed to design such three-dimensional structures and to construct these using simple building blocks. Publication in Nature.

Newspaper NRC and popular scientific magazine New Scientist write about Corentin Coulais’ research on one-way-traffic metamaterials. He published a paper on this subject in Nature on February 13.

A piece of corrugated rubber can function as a simple computer, displaying memory and displaying the ability to count to two. Leiden physicists describe the computing rubber in the journal PNAS. ‘Simple materials can process information, and we want to find the principles behind that.’

The project has been done in the Mechanical Metamaterials group under the supervision of Prof.dr. Martin van Hecke and MSc Anne Meeussen . The title of the presentation is: ''Elastic Moduli of Smooth and Corrugated Thin Silicone Rubber Sheets.

Martin van Hecke published an article in Nature, together with physicists from AMOLF and UvA. They have developed a metamaterial that folds itself up, even in multiple steps. Van Hecke appeared in the following media.

In their quest for materials that conduct electricity without resistance at moderate temperatures, scientists usually work on their chemical make-up. Now Leiden physicists have come up with a radically new approach: pinching holes in a periodic pattern. Publication in SciPost.

Anne Meeussen, who defended her PhD thesis on programmable materials in May 2021 earning cum laude honours, won the second Ehrenfest-Afanassjewa prize awarded by the Dutch Physics Council.

From July 22nd to August 1st, the Leiden Institute of Physics organizes its annual summer school, titled ‘Modern Physics at all Scales’.

From 16 to 26 July, the Leiden Institute of Physics organizes its annual summer school, titled ‘Modern Physics at all Scales’.

A new computer simulation shows the promising possibilities of the booming field of topology. Smartly designed mechanical structures carry sound exclusively one way and are immune to fabrication errors. Publication on 17 July in Nature Physics.

Leiden Physics Poster

Professor Tom Lubensky from the University of Pennsylvania is visiting Leiden University as the 64th Lorentz Professor at the department of Theoretical Physics. He is a pioneer in the field of theoretical soft matter physics and winner of the prestigious Buckley Condensed Matter Prize. We spoke with…

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded Vidi grants to Leiden researchers.