Materials whose function is determined by structure and not composition are called Metamaterials. The emergence of the metamaterials has attracted scientific world. Metamaterials are composed of nanostructures which can give them more applications that cannot found in natural materials. The metamaterial changes its shape to achieve the desired function. Limitations in them can be mitigated through incorporation of tunable elements into metamaterial devices. But all materials require specific structure for specific function. An active material provides an MM with tunability, reversibility, repeatability and fast response to change. Artificial metamaterials have emerged as a useful tool in optics and electromagnetics. Metadevices provide the possibility for better performance in many applications.
Thus it will be a toolkit to build reconfigurable materials. In the search for materials with new properties, there have been great advances in recent years aimed at the construction of architected materials, whose behaviour is governed by structure, rather than composition. Most of the proposed architected materials (also known as metamaterials) have a unique structure that cannot be reconfigured after fabrication, making each metamaterial suitable only for a specific task and limiting its applicability to well known and controlled environments.
The ancient art of origami provides an ideal platform for the design of reconfigurable systems, since a myriad of shapes can be achieved by actively folding thin sheets along pre-defined creases. While most of the proposed origami-inspired metamaterials are based on two- dimensional folding patterns. Furthermore, taking inspiration from snapology a modular origami technique—a highly reconfigurable three- dimensional (3D) metamaterial assembled from extruded cubes has been designed .
Although these examples showcase the potential of origami-inspired designs to enable reconfigurable architected materials, they do not fully exploit the range of achievable deformations and cover only a small region of the available design space. As a result, ample opportunities for the design of architected materials with tunable responses remain.
