Kirigami-inspired Coiling of Plate-like Structures

Coiling is a very efficient way of packaging thin and flat structures, but its applicability is subject to the fundamental restriction that the height of the coil cannot be smaller than the shortest length of the structure. We present a packaging scheme that allows a plate of any polygonal shape to be folded into a coil of arbitrarily small height. The key idea is to divide the plate into straight, concentric strips with a curved cross-section (e.g. tape springs), which are folded into a single nested coil. The strips have finite bending stiffness and are connected along the edges by slipping folds, to allow for arbitrary wall thickness of the strips. This packaging scheme is easily demonstrated on thin membranes, and its full potential is demonstrated through experiments on ultrathin carbon fiber structures.