Engineers at Rice University have developed a soft, magnetic-responsive metamaterial that can remotely change and maintain its shape inside the body, a development that could improve the safety, functionality, and precision of implantable and ingestible medical devices. The research, published in Science Advances , describes a nanomaterial designed from soft silicone and embedded with magnetic particles that can move between distinct shapes when activated by a magnetic field and retain that shape without a continuous power source, a limitation that hinders current soft biomedical and robotic systems.

“We programmed multistability, i.e. the ability to exist in multiple stable states, into the soft structure by incorporating geometric features such as trapezoidal supporting segments and

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