Shaping of elastic sheets by prescription of non-Euclidean metrics.

The connection between a surface's metric and its Gaussian curvature (Gauss theorem) provides the base for a shaping principle of locally growing or shrinking elastic sheets. We constructed thin gel sheets that undergo laterally nonuniform shrinkage. This differential shrinkage prescribes non-Euclidean metrics on the sheets. To minimize their elastic energy, the free sheets form three-dimensional structures that follow the imposed metric. We show how both large-scale buckling and multiscale wrinkling structures appeared, depending on the nature of possible embeddings of the prescribed metrics. We further suggest guidelines for how to generate each type of feature.