The geometrical arrangement of metamaterials controls their mechanical properties, such as Young’s modulus and the shear modulus. However, optimizing the geometrical arrangement for user-defined performance criteria leads to an inverse problem that is intractable when considering numerous combinations of properties and underlying geometries. Machine-learning techniques have been proven to be effective and practical to accomplish such nonintuitive design tasks. This paper proposes an inverse design framework using conditional generative adversarial networks (CGANs) to explore and optimize two-dimensional metamaterial designs consisting of spinodal topologies, called spinodoids. CGANs are capable of solving the many-to-many inverse problem, which requires generating a group of geometric patterns of representative volume elements with target combinations of mechanical properties. The performance of the networks was validated by numerical simulations with the finite element method. The proposed inverse design framework vastly improves the efficiency of design exploration and optimization of spinodoid metamaterials.
The research of metamaterials has achieved enormous success in the manipulation of light in a prescribed manner using delicately designed subwavelength structures, so‐called meta‐atoms. Even though modern numerical methods allow for the accurate calculation of the optical response of complex structures, the inverse design of metamaterials, which aims to retrieve the optimal structure according to given requirements, is still a challenging task owing to the nonintuitive and nonunique relationship between physical structures and optical responses. To better unveil this implicit relationship and thus facilitate metamaterial designs, it is proposed to represent metamaterials and model the inverse design problem in a probabilistically generative manner, enabling to elegantly investigate the complex structure–performance relationship in an interpretable way, and solve the one‐to‐many mapping issue that is intractable in a deterministic model. Moreover, to alleviate the burden of numerical calculations when collecting data, a semisupervised learning strategy is developed that allows the model to utilize unlabeled data in addition to labeled data in an end‐to‐end training. On a data‐driven basis, the proposed deep generative model can serve as a comprehensive and efficient tool that accelerates the design, characterization, and even new discovery in the research domain of metamaterials, and photonics in general.
more » « less- Award ID(s):
- 1916839
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10461222
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Advanced Materials
- Volume:
- 31
- Issue:
- 35
- ISSN:
- 0935-9648
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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