Phase-transforming and switchable metamaterials

A new soft structure that uses a meso- or macro-scale elastic instability to generate a shape-memory effect similar to that of a ferroelastic material is described. The soft metastructure exhibits phase transition, switching of variants, and shape-memory. The class of materials presented are useful, since they are "shape-memory alloys" of arbitrarily low modulus and arbitrarily large remnant strain.