A three step recipe for designing auxetic materials on demand

Abstract

Auxetics are an unusual family of materials that, for instance, when stretched in a particular direction will exhibit an expansion of the dimensions that are perpendicular to the applied stress; however, despite many known examples of auxectics there is no universal description of the material properties. Here, the authors report a model based on antiferromagnetic spins and demonstrate how this can be used to design a auxetic material with a Poisson ratio of -1 over a range of finite strain.