We present a monolithic mechanical metamaterial comprising a periodic arrangement of snapping units with tunable tensile behavior. Under tension, the metamaterial undergoes a large extension caused by sequential snap-through instabilities, and exhibits a pattern switch from an undeformed wavy-shape to a diamond configuration.
In recent times, mechanical metamaterials and a phononic crystals have attracted the attention of some groups, as they allow to exploit on a larger scale phenomena known from solid state physics, such as the creation of band gaps at certain frequencies. The peculiarity of metamaterials is that their effective properties emerge from the periodic geometric organization of their unit cells rather than from the constituting bulk materials. Furthermore, metamaterials can be built in any size, ranging from the nanometer to the meter scale, and out of any material to suit different needs.
