A new international project coordinated by IMDEA Materials Institute is dedicated to porous metal structures which combine lightweight with high strength.

The high surface-to-volume ratio of porous metals, together with optimisable mechanical properties, makes them promising candidates in various emerging applications such as metallic scaffolds for load-bearing bones, lightweight structures for transport technologies, electrodes for electrochemical energy storage devices and more.

Additionally, 3D printing may be used to create complex porous architectures with desired properties, enabling the creation of tailor-designed structures with desired mechanical properties.

The project entitled Porous Metal Genomics for Tailoring Mechanical Properties of Lightweight 3D-Printed Architectures (PORMETALOMICS) seeks to build a fundamental understanding of the relation between the morphology of porous structures and their mechanical properties across length-scales. It will build quantitative and exploitable structure-properties relationships (SPRs) and implement machine learning-based design in the vast morphological configuration space while 3D printing will be used to realize the new designs.

The PORMETALOMICS project will involve collaborating partners Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and the Institute of Mathematics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IMPAN).