Reprogrammable and reconfigurable mechanical computing metastructures with stable and high-density memory.

Abstract

Mechanical computing encodes information in deformed states of mechanical systems, such as multistable structures. However, achieving stable mechanical memory in most multistable systems remains challenging and often limited to binary information. Here, we report leveraging coupling kinematic bifurcation in rigid cube-based mechanisms with elasticity to create transformable, multistable mechanical computing metastructures with stable, high-density mechanical memory. Simply stretching the planar metastructure forms a multistable corrugated platform. It allows for independent mechanical or magnetic actuation of individual bistable element, serving as pop-up voxels for display or binary units for various tasks such as information writing, erasing, reading, encryption, and mechanologic computing. Releasing the pre-stretched strain stabilizes the prescribed information, resistant to external mechanical or magnetic perturbations, whereas re-stretching enables editable mechanical memory, akin to selective zones or disk formatting for information erasure and rewriting. Moreover, the platform can be reprogrammed and transformed into a multilayer configuration to achieve high-density memory.