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Molecular ferroelectrics combine electromechanical coupling and electric polarizabilities, offering immense promise in stimuli-dependent metamaterials. Despite such promise, current physical realizations of mechanical metamaterials remain hindered by the lack of rapid-prototyping ferroelectric metamaterial structures. Here, we present a continuous rapid printing strategy for the volumetric deposition of water-soluble molecular ferroelectric metamaterials with precise spatial control in virtually any three-dimensional (3D) geometry by means of an electric-field–assisted additive manufacturing. We demonstrate a scaffold-supported ferroelectric crystalline lattice that enables self-healing and a reprogrammable stiffness for dynamic tuning of mechanical metamaterials with a long lifetime and sustainability. A molecular ferroelectric architecture with resonant inclusions then exhibits adaptive mitigation of incident vibroacoustic dynamic loads via an electrically tunable subwavelength-frequency band gap. The findings shown here pave the way for the versatile additive manufacturing of molecular ferroelectric metamaterials.

Taxane chemotherapy formulations are used to treat advanced cancers, but limited solubility and propensity for aggregation in water complicates their development. Many involve drug dissolution in organic solvents and liquid surfactants, or use of lyophilization and reconstitution approaches. “Surfactant‐stripping,” has been previously reported, in which hydrophobic drugs were first dispersed in Pluronic (Poloxamer) surfactant, then subjected to membrane processing below the critical micelle temperature, to remove free and loose surfactant while retaining the active cargo. In the present work, stabilized, surfactant‐stripped (sss) cabazitaxel (CTX) micelles with potential for long‐term aqueous storage are developed. Some 50 hydrophobic co‐loaders cargos are screened for capacity to prevent aggregation of CTX, of which approximately 10 are effective. Further screening identifies the antifungal clotrimazole and the abortificant mifepristone as the most effective stabilizers for sss‐CTX micelles, via interference with the CTX aggregation process. Micelles remain stable for hundreds of days in aqueous storage and suppress the growth of orthotopic 4T1 murine mammary tumors. Pharmacokinetics, tubulin stabilization, and neutropenia induction of sss‐CTX are generally comparable to a TWEEN‐80 CTX formulation. These data reveal sss‐CTX as a taxane delivery vehicle with a high drug‐to‐surfactant ratio and capacity for extended aqueous storage.

Surfactant‐stripped micelles are formed from a commercially available cyanine fluoroalkylphosphate (CyFaP) salt dye and used for high contrast photoacoustic imaging (PAI) in the second near‐infrared window (NIR‐II). The co‐loading of Coenzyme Q10 into surfactant‐stripped CyFaP (ss‐CyFaP) micelles improves yield, storage stability, and results in a peak absorption wavelength in the NIR‐II window close to the 1064 nm output of Nd‐YAG lasers used for PAI. Aqueous ss‐CyFaP dispersions exhibit intense NIR‐II optical absorption, calculated to be greater than 500 at 1064 nm. ss‐CyFaP is detected through 12 cm of chicken breast tissue with PAI. In preclinical animal models, ss‐CyFaP is visualized in draining lymph nodes of rats through 3.1 cm of overlaid chicken breast tissue. Following intravenous administration, ss‐CyFaP accumulates in neoplastic tissues of mice and rats bearing orthotopic mammary tumors without observation of acute toxic side effects. ss‐CyFaP is imaged through whole compressed human breasts in three female volunteers at depths of 2.6–5.1 cm. Taken together, these data show that ss‐CyFaP is an accessible contrast agent for deep tissue PAI in the NIR‐II window.