Nanocardboard as a nanoscale analog of hollow sandwich plates

Corrugated paper cardboard provides an everyday example of a lightweight, yet rigid, sandwich structure. Here we present nanocardboard, a monolithic plate mechanical metamaterial composed of nanometer-thickness (25-400 nm) face sheets that are connected by micrometer-height tubular webbing. We fabricate nanocardboard plates of up to 1 centimeter-square size, which exhibit an enhanced bending stiffness at ultralow mass of ~1 g m-2. The nanoscale...