The integration of materials and architectural features at multiple length scales into structural mechanics has shifted the paradigm of structural design toward optimally engineered structures, which resulted in, for example, the Eiffel Tower. This structural revolution paved the way for the development of computational design approaches used in modern-day construction. Similar principles are now being applied to the design and manufacture of architected materials with a suite of properties determined a priori and attained through multiscale approaches. These new material classes potentially offer breakthrough advances in almost every branch of technology: from ultra-lightweight and damage-tolerant structural materials to safe and efficient energy storage, biomedical devices, biochemical, and micromechanical sensors and actuators, nanophotonic devices, and textiles. When reduced to the microscale, such materials embody the characteristics of both the constituent material, which brings the effects of its microstructure and ensuing properties at the relevant characteristic length scales, as well as the structure, which is driven by architected design. This issue gives an overview of the current state of the art of this new class of materials.

A material’s properties are derived from its constituent material composition and its structural hierarchy across length scales down to the nanometer level. At submicron length scales, materials exhibit unique size-affected mechanical properties such as enhanced strength, ductility, and flaw tolerance, but these are generally lost in bulk materials. Emerging fabrication methods have enabled the creation of materials with controllable architectures down to the nanoscale. These micro- and nanoarchitected materials utilize both resilient architectures and size-affected constituent materials to achieve unprecedented mechanical properties such as ultrahigh strength at low density, recoverability after large applied strains in intrinsically brittle materials, and metamaterial properties such as chirality and negative static compressibility. In this article, we describe the governing principles behind these materials and outline recent progress in the field. We unravel the details of the deformation and failure processes to facilitate a fundamental understanding of effective materials properties and provide a guideline for the design of the next generation of nanoarchitected materials.

This article examines two intertwined topics on architected materials with imperfections—their mechanics and optimum design. We first discuss the main factors that control defect sensitivity along with a range of strategies for defect characterization. The potency of both as-designed and as-manufactured defects on their macroscopic response is highlighted with an emphasis on those caused by additive manufacturing technology. As a natural extension of defect sensitivity, we describe the design approaches for architected materials with particular focus on systematic tools of topology optimization. Recent extensions to formally incorporate imperfections in the optimization formulation are discussed, where the ultimate goal is to generate architectures that are flaw-tolerant and perform robustly in the presence of imperfections. We conclude with an outlook on the field, highlighting potential areas of future research.

We present a survey of modeling techniques used to describe and predict architected cellular metamaterials, and to optimize their topology and geometry toward tailoring their mechanical properties such as stiffness, strength, fracture toughness, and energy absorption. Architectures of interest include truss-, plate-, and shell-based networks with and without periodicity, whose effective mechanical behavior is simulated by tools such as classical finite elements, further scale-bridging techniques such as homogenization and concurrent scale-coupling, and effective continuum descriptions of the underlying discrete networks. In addition to summarizing advances in applying the latter techniques to improve the properties of metamaterials and featuring prominent examples of structure–property relations achieved this way, we also present recently introduced techniques to improve the optimization process toward a full exploitation of the available design space, accounting for both linear and nonlinear material behavior.

Architected materials are a unique and emerging class of materials where performance is fundamentally controlled by geometry at multiple length scales, from the nano- to the macroscale, rather than chemical composition alone. As a result, the realization of these remarkable materials is contingent upon the ability to faithfully reproduce the designed architecture. This presents fundamental challenges in fabrication due to the required three-dimensional complexity, multiple length scales, range of material constituents, possibility of multiple materials in a single architecture, and overall manufacturing throughput. Additive manufacturing (AM) processes can provide solutions to some of these challenges and are discussed in this article. Specifically, light-based and extrusion-based processes and associated materials are presented with an emphasis on recent developments, including volumetric additive manufacturing, and on-the-fly mixing of materials in extrusion-based printing systems. While remarkable advancements have been made in AM for architected materials, bringing these materials and processes to industrial realization remains a significant challenge.

Architected materials play an essential role in achieving next-generation electrochemical systems with unprecedented power and energy capabilities. The geometry and chemistry of architected materials can be engineered to address key areas of performance, including electrochemical kinetics and mechanics. Electrochemical kinetics impact key metrics such as power density, efficiency, and lifetime in batteries, fuel cells, and sensors. Additionally, electrochemical reactions can dramatically change material composition, which may result in large strains (in the hundreds of percent) that cause mechanical failure. In this article, we summarize advances in energy storage offered by architected materials and highlight fabrication methods used to realize these advances. We also discuss electrochemistry as an enabling tool for architected materials with functionality beyond energy storage and sensing.

The effort to develop metallic alloys with increased structural strength and improved radiation performance has focused on the incorporation of either solute elements or microstructural inhomogeneities to mitigate damage. The recent discovery and development of single-phase concentrated solid-solution alloys (SP-CSAs) has prompted fundamental questions that challenge established theories and models currently applicable to conventional alloys. The current understanding of electronic and atomic effects, defect evolution, and microstructure progression suggests that radiation energy dissipates in SP-CSAs at different interaction strengths via energy carriers (electrons, phonons, and magnons). Modification of electronic- and atomic-level heterogeneities and tailoring of atomic transport processes can be realized through tuning of the chemical complexity of SP-CSAs by the selection of appropriate elements and their concentrations. Fundamental understanding of controlling energy dissipation via site-to-site chemical complexity reveals new design principles for predictive discovery and guided synthesis of new alloys with targeted functionalities, including radiation tolerance.