Research
Creativity, collaboration, and ingenuity are at the heart of our research.
Creativity, collaboration, and ingenuity are at the heart of our research.
Inventing advanced material solutions
We love solving complex, technical problems. It’s a habit formed by years of academic research and built upon by contracts with numerous federal and private organizations. Today, we develop solutions for industries including aerospace, energy, and defense.
Our interdisciplinary team of physicists, engineers, and builders achieves success through creative ideation and intense technical validation.
We leverage our expertise in metamaterial composites to design material solutions that not only solve important problems, but do so by providing unique advanced functionality.
Technology development
Our technology has been developed under contract with several federal and private organizations.
Federal contracts
National Science Foundation (NSF)
- SBIR: Metamaterial development
NASA
- Wire-laser metal 3D printed bearings for extreme environments
- SBIR: Accelerated aging of metamaterials in space
- SBIR: Urban Air Mobility Vehicle crash safety
U.S. Department of Defense
U.S. Department of Energy
- SBIR: Hydrogen transportation and storage components made with metal hybrid additive and subtractive manufacturing
- SBIR: Bimetallic functionally graded materials for high-temperature corrosion resistance
- SBIR: Additively manufactured sodium fast reactor bearings
- SBIR: Geothermal elastomer replacement
- Geothermal Manufacturing Prize: Additively manufactured high-strength casing connectors
- I AM Hydro Prize: Hydropower component improvement
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
Partners and Accelerators
Our partners provide invaluable support and resources:
- Ansys
- Dawnbreaker
- FedTech
- Larta Institute
- Lever
- MassChallenge
- Massachusetts Clean Energy Center
- StartUp Worcester
Metamaterial composites
More than the sum of their molecules
Multiscale Systems is the expert in metamaterial composites, a structural material that unlocks advanced functionality that’s difficult or impossible to create with normal materials.
Metamaterials are common materials – like metals, polymers, and composites – formed into computationally generated, complex geometries. These geometries are tailored to each application, designed to provide enhanced performance and unique functionality.
Inspired by origami’s process of folding flat sheets into three-dimensional forms, metamaterial composites can be made using familiar manufacturing methods, such as additive manufacturing, thermoforming, and pattern transfer. Advanced functionality manifests through the unique combination of selected materials and patented geometric patterns.
Metamaterial composite technologies
Created under contract with NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy, these technologies have been designed with specific application functionality.
MetaCORE®
Ideal energy absorber
Isotropic energy absorption
Lightweight
Mitigates sudden deceleration
Customizable crush strength
MetaCORE®-LD
Lightweight sandwich panel
Low density cores
High shear strength
Temperature regulation
Sustainable materials
MetaTHERM®
Extreme environment survivability
Holds severe pressure differentials
Controls thermal expansion
Regulates temperature
Mitigates equipment failure
Technology development case studies
Dive deeper into our R&D through case studies. We examine lessons learned and insights gained while developing our technology.
In 2019, we won an NSF SBIR for development of mechanical metamaterials. What began as a general desire to do something with our metamaterial research evolved into a targeted commercialization strategy for MetaCORE-LD as an alternative lightweight sandwich panel for semi-trailers.
Safety is a big concern for UAMVs. NASA is proactively seeding the development of lightweight crash mitigation technology in preparation for this emerging mode of transportation.
The U.S. Army is modernizing its acquisition of disruptive technologies like our mechanical metamaterial solutions. Representatives from AFC and ASA(ALT) selected Multiscale Systems’ MetaCORE technology for acceleration through the xTechSearch program.
Achieving utility scale geothermal energy is bottlenecked by the cost of equipment failure in extreme downhole environments. New materials – like MetaTHERM – are required to unlock the potential of Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS).
In 2021, we received an SBIR contract from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for the development of a contact-free optical metrology method to standardize the manufacturing of mechanical metamaterials.