Extraordinary disordered hyperuniform multifunctional composites

A variety of performance demands are being placed on material systems, including desirable mechanical, thermal, electrical, optical, acoustic and flow properties. The purpose of the present article is to review the emerging field of disordered hyperuniform composites and their novel multifunctional characteristics. Disordered hyperuniform media are exotic amorphous states of matter that are characterized by an anomalous suppression of large-scale volume-fraction fluctuations compared to those in “garden-variety” disordered materials. Such unusual composites can have advantages over their periodic counterparts, such as unique or nearly optimal, direction-independent physical properties and robustness against defects. It will be shown that disordered hyperuniform composites and porous media can be endowed with a broad spectrum of extraordinary physical properties, including photonic, phononic, transport, chemical and mechanical characteristics that are only beginning to be discovered.