Four-Mode Programmable Metamaterial Using Ternary Foldable Origami

Designing a multifunctional metamaterial with programmable feature has become a new trend in mechanical, acoustic, and electromagnetic research fields due to the controllability of their structural behaviors and functionalities. The codable or reconfigurable structures have shown more remarkable characteristics than the traditional and conventional metamaterials to implement functional programmability. However, structural complexity and hi-tech requirement are the biggest constraints to their practical applications. This paper numerically and experimentally investigates a programmable metamaterial based on ternary foldable origami in the gigahertz-frequency regime. The proposed metamaterial provides four transformable modes corresponding to four different functions of electromagnetic reflector and frequency-selectable absorbers by programming unique ternary foldable origami coded as 0, 1, and 2 for different folding levels. Interestingly, the proposed foldable origami consists of a simple dielectric paper and a bottom conductor, while there is no conductive pattern on the top. Therefore, the proposed programmable metamaterial is extremely robust and can be extended to a multiresonance mode and origami computing.