Metamaterials – artificially made materials with properties that aren’t found in the natural world – are poised to transform daily life. Their unique properties are enhancing products from sporting goods to consumer electronics and beyond.

As a sports engineer and the person leading on health applications within the UKRI-funded UK Metamaterials Network, I have unique insights into how metamaterials are enhancing sporting goods.

Specifically, they are helping to make sport and exercise more accessible, inclusive, and safer.

Metamaterials are made with meta-atoms (Figure 1). These building blocks have a specific geometry that has been engineered to allow the material to perform specific functions and have particular properties. Their functions may be related to acoustics, chemistry, electromagnetism, magnetism, or the material’s mechanical properties.

Metamaterials sit between products and materials. They are not materials in the traditional sense because their design is intrinsically linked to that of the product they are used within to enhance performance.

The rapid-uptake, multibillion dollar sporting goods sector has relatively low barriers to market entry, making it an ideal space for testing new and emerging technologies.

As a result, it has been an early adopter of metamaterials, particularly mechanical metamaterials (Figure 2), as described in an Institution of Mechanical Engineers report on sports engineering.

Auxetic metamaterials have been widely explored and adopted within sporting goods. Auxetic........

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