Digital Logic Processes in Soft, Conductive Mechanical Materials

Information processing in soft autonomous matter has motivated the advancement of artificial materials that are capable of logic operations. With recent developments of conformable conductive composites in flexible substrates and mechanologic techniques for digital bit representation in mechanical media, an opportunity is explored here to create digital logic using conductive, compliant materials. In this research we introduce a class of soft mechanical metamaterials with programmable elastic instabilities and conductive networks that function as electronic logic gates with mechanical stress inputs. By uncovering the discrete deformation states of a metamaterial unit cell, we establish a correlation between collapse configuration and electronic conductivity of two elementary switch designs. We build upon this manifestation of unit cell switching assemblies and systematic electronic connections to realize the 6 logic gates: AND, NAND, OR, NOR, XOR, and XNOR. Additional investigation into Boolean mathematical representations of combinational logic illustrate the ability to build upon this foundation for higher order logic processes. This research provides a general method of leveraging cellular, mechanical metamaterials composed of conductive polymers that think about applied mechanical stress. Such fundamental findings are not limited across length scales and physics based on the mathematical and kinetmatic foundations of this new digital logic framework.