Researchers led by Rice University’s Yong Lin Kong have developed a soft but strong metamaterial that can be controlled remotely to rapidly transform its size and shape.

The invention, published in Science Advances, represents a significant advancement that can potentially transform ingestible and implantable medical devices.

Metamaterials are synthetic constructs that exhibit unusual properties not typically found in natural materials. Instead of relying solely on chemical composition, the effective behavior of these materials is primarily determined by the physical structure, i.e., the specific shape, arrangement and scale of their building blocks.