A computational tool based on an additive approach and linear algebra has been developed together with a fabrication strategy for the systematic exploration of rigid-deployable, compact and reconfigurable kirigami patterns.

The ancient Japanese art of paper folding called origami (from Japanese ori, meaning fold, and gami meaning paper) and its variant in which paper cutting is introduced, called kirigami (from Japanese kiri, meaning cut), have attracted the attention of many scientists in recent years. This scientific popularity comes from the striking features that can be obtained by simply folding and cutting two-dimensional thin materials; these transformed an artistic activity into a vibrant field of scientific research and have generated a class of architected metamaterials with programmable mechanical properties1,2. Origami and kirigami have become engineering tools in many apparently uncorrelated fields such as energy-efficient building skins, deployable structures in space satellites, self-folding robots, parachutes, biomedical devices, stretchable and flexible electronics, food packaging, and reconfigurable microelectronic devices3. Their interesting properties can also be combined in new hybrid configurations of origami–kirigami patterns. The potentialities of kirigami metamaterials can be fully exploited by optimizing their design with powerful computational tools, which help designers forecast the infinite configurations that kirigami materials can offer, as well as discover unseen ones with mechanical properties for new applications. One challenge in transforming kirigami from prototypes to real-life devices is represented by fabrication techniques that should be suitably tailored to create the complex patterns that, by combining rigid tiles or mainly rigid portions with flexible linkages, confer to kirigami their deployable character. Writing in Nature Computational Science, Dudte et al.4 have developed a computational method to design quad-kirigami patterns while satisfying a priori defined configurations.