Structural metamaterials with negative mechanical/thermomechanical indices: A review

Structural metamaterials presenting negative values of one or more mechanical and thermomechanical indices – namely the Poisson's ratio, the linear compressibility, and the coefficient of thermal expansion – are the promising candidates to the applications in many fields, ranging from precision mechanics to biomedical devices or energy absorption. Although scattered mentions may be found in the literature since the late eighties of 20th century, the systematic research efforts concerning these materials became effective much later. The present work is to review the main scientific contributions to the topic in the last five years. This paper first deals with those metamaterials showing a single negative index, and then proceeds to analyze the much less frequent instances of coupled negative indices, with emphasis on the so-called anepectic case, which exhibits an unusual thermomechanical response.