Excimer laser melting and lateral resolidification is demonstrated in 200nm thick Cu and Au elemental metal thin films encapsulated between SiO2 layers. Projection irradiation is used to selectively and completely melt lines 3to30μm wide in the metal film—with rapid lateral solidification originating from the unmelted sidewalls of the molten region—resulting in large columnar grains, extending transversely to the middle of the line. Transmission electron microscopy reveals twinning structures and other defects typical of rapid solidification. Encapsulation and control of the fluence are found to be crucial parameters necessary to prevent film dewetting while molten.

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Creating multifunctional concrete materials with advanced functionalities and mechanical tunability is a critical step toward reimagining the traditional civil infrastructure systems. Here, the concept of nanogenerator‐integrated mechanical metamaterial concrete is presented to design lightweight and mechanically tunable concrete systems with energy harvesting and sensing functionalities. The proposed metamaterial concrete systems are created via integrating the mechanical metamaterial and nano‐energy‐harvesting paradigms. These advanced materials are composed of reinforcement auxetic polymer lattices with snap‐through buckling behavior fully embedded inside a conductive cement matrix. We rationally design their composite structures to induce contact‐electrification between the layers under mechanical excitations/triggering. The conductive cement enhanced with graphite powder serves as the electrode in the proposed systems, while providing the desired mechanical performance. Experimental studies are conducted to investigate the mechanical and electrical properties of the designed prototypes. The metamaterial concrete systems are tuned to achieve up to 15% compressibility under cycling loading. The power output of the nanogenerator‐integrated metamaterial concrete prototypes reaches 330 µW. Furthermore, the self‐powered sensing functionality of the nanogenerator concrete systems for distributed health monitoring of large‐scale concrete structures is demonstrated. The metamaterial concrete paradigm can possibly enable the design of smart civil infrastructure systems with a broad range of advanced functionalities.

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