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Tag: Materials Science

  • The World-Class External Cladding System Technology for Your Safety

    The World-Class External Cladding System Technology for Your Safety

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    Newswise — There are two major types of disasters. Unlike natural disasters like tornado and earthquake, fire belongs in the category of social accidents. Building fire accident causes significant damages. Five years ago, 72 people lost their lives in the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017. As The Guardian wrote in their article, Every death was avoidable, these types of social accidents can be prevented by new technology. The Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology (KICT, President Kim Byung-suk) announced they have developed a world-class exterior wall construction method that has good insulation performance and is resistant to fire.

    As the insulation performance standards for buildings are being strengthened day by day to reduce greenhouse gases, external insulation methods such as EIFS (Exterior insulation finishing system) construction is increasing significantly. In particular, as an external cladding system for high-rise or super-high-rise buildings, aluminium composite material (ACM) with insulation, which is easy to construct and has a beautiful appearance, is commonly used.

    However, in the conventional ACM cladding method, heat loss often occurs due to heat bridge, a phenomenon in which warm air or heat inside the building escapes through the building structure due to the space existing between the outer wall of the building and the finishing material. In addition, fires in high-rise buildings rapidly spread vertically due to the stack effect that occurs when strong air generated in high-rise buildings rises or falls vertically.

    Examples of such cladding fire accidents include the Grenfell Tower fire in London 2017 and the 33-storey apartment fire in Ulsan, Republic of Korea in 2020. The Ulsan apartment fire incident was a large-scale fire that burned the entire high-rise building and spread the fire to the surrounding buildings even though glass wool was used as the insulation material.

    A research team led by Dr. Taewon Lee and research specialist Do-Hyun Kim at the Department of Fire Safety Research in KICT, developed a technology that improved these problems.

    It was constructed as a unit ACM cladding module with an insulating material attached, but the hollow layers of the vertical and horizontal parts existing at the junction between these modules were reinforced with insulating and flame retardant materials. The developed technology is a new building external wall structure and construction method that can effectively reduce heat loss and fundamentally block the spread of fire by filling the existing empty space with insulation and flame retardant materials. Two effects can be expected at the same time: energy saving and fire safety performance improvement.

    As a result of performance verification of the developed technology, it was confirmed that the thermal conductivity of 0.147 W/m2·K. This result exceeded the building-energy regulations(Exterior wall(Direct) 0.15 W/m2·K) for residential buildings in the central part of South Korea. Germany is one of the most efforts countries for the Energy Conservation Act(EnEV) regarding external wall systems. The EnEV requires all new exterior walls of heated rooms to reach a U-value of 0.45 W/m²K. Compared to other countries, KICT external ACM cladding technology is overcome severe regulation.

    In addition, a Large-scale fire test was conducted at the Department of Fire Safety Research to verify the performance of preventing fire spread. As a result, in the case of fire spread delay time, compared to the existing ACM cladding that did not fill the hollow layer, it secured more than 4 times longer time from 5 minutes to 23 minutes, securing the golden time for fire accidents.

    Meanwhile, cross-checking fire tests were conducted at the BRE( Building Research Establishment), which is the world’s only BS 8414-1 test certification body, a real-scale fire safety test for the external cladding system.

    The developed technology took 21 minutes, exceeding the international standard of 15 minutes, and its performance was confirmed by international certification organizations.

    Researcher Do-Hyun Kim said, “The application of an economical and fire-safe building external cladding tech will greatly contribute to saving energy consumption and reducing greenhouse gas emissions as well as protecting people’s lives and property from fire.”

    This achievement was selected as the grand prize in the 2021 Disaster Safety Thesis Contest organized by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety (Thesis: Development of a building exterior wall system that satisfies fire safety and insulation performance at the same time).

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    The Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology (KICT) is a government sponsored research institute established to contribute to the development of Korea’s construction industry and national economic growth by developing source and practical technology in the fields of construction and national land management.

    Research for this paper was carried out under the KICT Research Program (project no. 20210199-001, 20220237-001) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT

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    National Research Council of Science and Technology

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  • A glimpse of a cell’s sense of touch

    A glimpse of a cell’s sense of touch

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    Newswise — Building tissues and organs is one of the most complex and essential tasks that cells must accomplish during embryogenesis. In this collective task, cells communicate through a variety of communication methods, including biochemical signals – similar to a cell’s sense of smell – and mechanical cues – the cell’s sense of touch. Researchers in a variety of disciplines have been fascinated by cell communication for decades. Professor Otger Campàs together with his colleagues from the Physics of Life (PoL) Cluster of Excellence at Technische Universität Dresden and from the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) have now been able to unravel another mystery surrounding the question of how cells use their sense of touch to make vital decisions during embryogenesis. Their paper has now been published in the journal Nature Materials.

    Testing the surroundings
    In their paper, the researchers report how cells within a living embryo mechanically test their environment and what mechanical parameters and structures they perceive. “We know a lot about how cells sense and respond to mechanical cues in a dish. However, their microenvironment is quite different within an embryo and we did not know what mechanical cues they perceive in a living tissue,” said Campàs, Chair of Tissue Dynamics and PoL Managing Director.

    The mechanical cures helps cells make important decisions, such as whether or not to divide, move or even differentiate, the differentiation process by which stem cells turn into more specialized cells able to perform specific functions. Previous works revealed that stem cells placed on a synthetic substrate rely heavily on mechanical cues to make decisions: Cells on surfaces with a stiffness similar to bones became osteoblasts (bone cells), whereas cells on surfaces with a stiffness similar to brain tissue became neurons. The findings greatly advanced the field of tissue engineering as researchers used these mechanical cues to create synthetic scaffolds to coax stem cells to develop into desired outcomes. These scaffolds are used today in a variety of biomedical applications.

    From a dish to the living embryo

    However, a dish is not the cell’s natural habitat. While building an organism, cells are not in contact with synthetic scaffolds in a flat dish, but rather with complex living materials in three dimensions.

    Over the last decade, Prof. Campàs’ research group uncovered the mechanical cues that guide cells in the complex tissues of an embryo. Using a unique technique developed in his lab, the researchers could probe the living tissue in a similar way as cells do and find out what mechanical structures the cells sense. “We first studied how cells mechanically test their micro-environment as they differentiate and build the body axis of a vertebrate, as they differentiate,” Campàs said. “Cells used different protrusions to push and pull on their environment. So we quantified how fast and strong they were pushing.” Using a ferromagnetic oil droplet that they inserted between developing cells and subjecting it to a controlled magnetic field, they were able to mimic these tiny forces and measure the mechanical response of the cells surroundings.

    Sensing the tissue architecture and cells change fate

    Critical to these embryonic cells’ actions is their collective physical state, which Campàs and his research group described in a previous paper to be that of an active foam, similar in consistency to soap suds or beer froth, with cells clumped together by cell adhesion and tugging of each other. What the cells are mechanically probing, Campàs and team found out, is the collective state of this “living foam” – how stiff it is and how confined the assemblage is. “And right at the moment that cells differentiate and decide to change their fate, there is a change in the material properties of the tissue that they perceive.” According to him, at the moment the cells within the tissue decide on their fate, the tissue falls its stiffness.

    Going forward

    What’s not yet proven in this study is the complex question of whether – and if so, how – the change in the stiffness in the embryonic environment drives the change in the cell state. “There is an interplay between the mechanical characteristics of the structures that cells collectively build, such as tissues or organs, and the decisions they make individually, as these depend on the mechanics cues that cells sense in the tissue. This interplay is at the core of how nature builds organisms.”

    The findings from this study might also have important implications for tissue engineering. Potential materials that mimic the foam-like characteristics of the embryonic tissue, as opposed to the widely used synthetic polymer or gel scaffolds, may allow researchers to create more robust and sophisticated synthetic tissues, organs and implants in the lab, with the appropriate geometries and mechanical characteristics for the desired functions.

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    Technische Universitat Dresden

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  • New sensor uses MRI to detect light deep in the brain

    New sensor uses MRI to detect light deep in the brain

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    Newswise — CAMBRIDGE, MA — Using a specialized MRI sensor, MIT researchers have shown that they can detect light deep within tissues such as the brain.

    Imaging light in deep tissues is extremely difficult because as light travels into tissue, much of it is either absorbed or scattered. The MIT team overcame that obstacle by designing a sensor that converts light into a magnetic signal that can be detected by MRI (magnetic resonance imaging).

    This type of sensor could be used to map light emitted by optical fibers implanted in the brain, such as the fibers used to stimulate neurons during optogenetic experiments. With further development, it could also prove useful for monitoring patients who receive light-based therapies for cancer, the researchers say.

    “We can image the distribution of light in tissue, and that’s important because people who use light to stimulate tissue or to measure from tissue often don’t quite know where the light is going, where they’re stimulating, or where the light is coming from. Our tool can be used to address those unknowns,” says Alan Jasanoff, an MIT professor of biological engineering, brain and cognitive sciences, and nuclear science and engineering.

    Jasanoff, who is also an associate investigator at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, is the senior author of the study, which appears today in Nature Biomedical Engineering. Jacob Simon PhD ’21 and MIT postdoc Miriam Schwalm are the paper’s lead authors, and Johannes Morstein and Dirk Trauner of New York University are also authors of the paper.

    A light-sensitive probe

    Scientists have been using light to study living cells for hundreds of years, dating back to the late 1500s, when the light microscope was invented. This kind of microscopy allows researchers to peer inside cells and thin slices of tissue, but not deep inside an organism.

    “One of the persistent problems in using light, especially in the life sciences, is that it doesn’t do a very good job penetrating many materials,” Jasanoff says. “Biological materials absorb light and scatter light, and the combination of those things prevents us from using most types of optical imaging for anything that involves focusing in deep tissue.”

    To overcome that limitation, Jasanoff and his students decided to design a sensor that could transform light into a magnetic signal.

    “We wanted to create a magnetic sensor that responds to light locally, and therefore is not subject to absorbance or scattering. Then this light detector can be imaged using MRI,” he says.

    Jasanoff’s lab has previously developed MRI probes that can interact with a variety of molecules in the brain, including dopamine and calcium. When these probes bind to their targets, it affects the sensors’ magnetic interactions with the surrounding tissue, dimming or brightening the MRI signal.

    To make a light-sensitive MRI probe, the researchers decided to encase magnetic particles in a nanoparticle called a liposome. The liposomes used in this study are made from specialized light-sensitive lipids that Trauner had previously developed. When these lipids are exposed to a certain wavelength of light, the liposomes become more permeable to water, or “leaky.” This allows the magnetic particles inside to interact with water and generate a signal detectable by MRI.

    The particles, which the researchers called liposomal nanoparticle reporters (LisNR), can switch from permeable to impermeable depending on the type of light they’re exposed to. In this study, the researchers created particles that become leaky when exposed to ultraviolet light, and then become impermeable again when exposed to blue light. The researchers also showed that the particles could respond to other wavelengths of light.

    “This paper shows a novel sensor to enable photon detection with MRI through the brain. This illuminating work introduces a new avenue to bridge photon and proton-driven neuroimaging studies,” says Xin Yu, an assistant professor radiology at Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the study.

    Mapping light

    The researchers tested the sensors in the brains of rats — specifically, in a part of the brain called the striatum, which is involved in planning movement and responding to reward. After injecting the particles throughout the striatum, the researchers were able to map the distribution of light from an optical fiber implanted nearby.

    The fiber they used is similar to those used for optogenetic stimulation, so this kind of sensing could be useful to researchers who perform optogenetic experiments in the brain, Jasanoff says.

    “We don’t expect that everybody doing optogenetics will use this for every experiment — it’s more something that you would do once in a while, to see whether a paradigm that you’re using is really producing the profile of light that you think it should be,” Jasanoff says.

    In the future, this type of sensor could also be useful for monitoring patients receiving treatments that involve light, such as photodynamic therapy, which uses light from a laser or LED to kill cancer cells.

    The researchers are now working on similar probes that could be used to detect light emitted by luciferases, a family of glowing proteins that are often used in biological experiments. These proteins can be used to reveal whether a particular gene is activated or not, but currently they can only be imaged in superficial tissue or cells grown in a lab dish.

    Jasanoff also hopes to use the strategy used for the LisNR sensor to design MRI probes that can detect stimuli other than light, such as neurochemicals or other molecules found in the brain.

    “We think that the principle that we use to construct these sensors is quite broad and can be used for other purposes too,” he says.

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    The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the G. Harold and Leyla Y. Mathers Foundation, a Friends of the McGovern Fellowship from the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, the MIT Neurobiological Engineering Training Program, and a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship from the European Commission.

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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

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  • Shrinking hydrogels enlarge nanofabrication options

    Shrinking hydrogels enlarge nanofabrication options

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    Newswise — Carnegie Mellon University’s Yongxin (Leon) Zhao and the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Shih-Chi Chen have a big idea for manufacturing nanodevices.

    Zhao’s Biophotonics Lab develops novel techniques to study biological and pathological processes in cells and tissues. Through a process called expansion microscopy, the lab works to advance techniques to proportionally enlarge microscopic samples embedded in a hydrogel, allowing researchers to be able to view fine details without upgrading their microscopes.

    In 2019, an inspiring conversation with Shih-Chi Chen, who was visiting Carnegie Mellon as an invited speaker and is a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, sparked a collaboration between the two researchers. They thought they could use their combined expertise to find novel solutions for the long-standing challenge in microfabrication: developing ways to reduce the size of printable nanodevices to as small as 10s of nanometers or several atoms thick.

    Their solution is the opposite of expansion microscopy: create the 3D pattern of a material in hydrogel and shrink it for nanoscale resolution.

    “Shih-Chi is known for inventing the ultrafast two-photon lithography system,” said Zhao, the Eberly Family Career Development Associate Professor of Biological Sciences. “We met during his visit to Carnegie Mellon and decided to combine our techniques and expertise to pursue this radical idea.”

    The results of the collaboration open new doors for designing sophisticated nanodevices and are published in the journal Science.

    While conventional 3D nanoscale printers focus a laser point to serially process materials and take a long time to complete a design, Chen’s invention changes the width of the laser’s pulse to form patterned light sheets, allowing for a whole image containing hundreds of thousands of pixels (voxels) to be printed at once without compromising the axial resolution.

    The manufacturing technique is called femtosecond project two-photon lithography, or FP-TPL. The method is up to 1,000 times faster than previous nanoprinting techniques and could lead to cost-effective large scale nanoprinting for use in in biotechnology, photonics or nanodevices.

    For the process, researchers would direct the femtosecond two-photon laser to modify the network structure and pore size of the hydrogel, which then creates boundaries for water-dispersible materials. The hydrogel would then be immersed in water containing nanoparticles of metal, alloys, diamond, molecular crystals, polymers or fountain pen ink.

    “Through fortuitous happenstance, the nanomaterials we tried were all attracted automatically to the printed pattern in hydrogel and assembled beautifully,” Zhao said. “As the gel shrinks and dehydrates, the materials become even more densely packed and connect to each other.”

    For example, if a printed hydrogel is placed into a silver nanoparticle solution, the silver nanoparticles self-assemble to the gel along the laser-printed pattern. As the gel dries out, it can shrink to up to 13 times its original size, making the silver dense enough to form a nano silver wire and conduct electricity, Zhao said.

    Because the gels are three-dimensional, printed patterns can be as well.

    As a demonstration of the technique’s use for encrypted optical storage — such as how CDs and DVDs are written and read with a laser — the team designed and built a seven-layer 3D nanostructure that read “SCIENCE” after it was optically decrypted.

    Each layer contained a 200×200-pixel hologram of a letter. After shrinking the sample the entire structure appears as a translucent rectangle under an optical microscope. One would need the right information on how much to expand the sample and where to shine a light through to read the information.

    “Based on our result, the technique can pack 5 petabits worth of information in a tiny cubic centimeter of space. That’s roughly 2.5 times of all U.S. academic research libraries combined.” he said.

    Zhao said that in the future the researchers’ goal is to build functional nanodevices with multiple materials.

    “In the end we would like to use the new technology to fabricate functional nanodevices, like nanocircuits, nanobiosensors, or even nanorobots for different applications,” Zhao said. “We are only limited by our imagination.”

    In addition to Zhao and Chen, co-authors on the Science paper, “3D Nanofabrication via Ultrafast Laser Patterning and Kinetically-regulated Material Assembly,” include Fei Han, Songyun Gu, Ni Zhao, all of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Aleks Klimas, of Carnegie Mellon.

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    Carnegie Mellon University

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  • Superscattering of water waves – breaking the single channel scattering limit

    Superscattering of water waves – breaking the single channel scattering limit

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    Newswise — Recently, the National Science Review published the study of Huaping Wang’s group at Zhejiang University online. Inspired by electromagnetic metamaterials, the research team designed and fabricated a water wave superscattering device based on degeneracy resonance by using the similarity of water wave equation and electromagnetic wave equation under shallow water conditions, which was realized it experimentally.

    Water waves are a very intuitive fluctuating phenomenon that is widely observed in the natural world. Understanding and controlling the propagation of water waves is significant for both hydrodynamics and marine engineering. In recent years, metamaterials have developed rapidly and become a beneficial tool to manipulate electromagnetic waves, elastic waves, acoustic waves and water waves. Enhanced water wave scattering using metamaterials has a wide range of promising applications in marine energy harvesting and coastal protection.

    Inspired by the superscattering in electromagnetic and acoustic waves, it is possible to design water wave superscatterers based on transformation optics to achieve an increase in the scattering intensity of a given object. However, its experimental implementation remains a great challenge due to the extreme requirements on anisotropic parameters and in water wave conditions.

    Based on the degenerate resonant superscattering mechanism, the researchers theoretically designed and experimentally verified the superscatterer structure of water waves in an experimental water tank. The subwavelength superscatterer is composed of multiple concentric cylinders with different heights, and the geometry and operating frequency of the superscatterer are optimized by a simulated annealing algorithm. By designing resonances with different angular momentum channels, the total scattering cross section can break the limit of single-channel scattering by several times and also far exceed the scattering intensity of ordinary scatterers of the same size. For an ordinary scatterer, the resonances are spread out and the total scattering cross section is limited by the single channel.

    In the experiments, the research group measured the near-field patterns of the water-wave superscatterers, which were in agreement with the theoretical predictions and numerical simulations, and further measured the superscattering effects under different boundary conditions, water depths, and frequencies.

    This study provides a simple and low-cost method to enhance the scattering of water waves, which can be used to enhance the scattering of small sub-wavelength objects, and this is highly relevant for marine engineering, offshore coastal protection, etc., and may be used in marine energy harvesting devices and coastal protection facilities in the future.

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    See the article:

    Superscattering of water waves

    https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwac255

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    Science China Press

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  • Dynamical fractal discovered in clean magnetic crystal

    Dynamical fractal discovered in clean magnetic crystal

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    Newswise — The nature and properties of materials depend strongly on dimension. Imagine how different life in a one-dimensional or two-dimensional world would be from the three dimensions we’re commonly accustomed to. With this in mind, it is perhaps not surprising that fractals – objects with fractional dimension – have garnered significant attention since their discovery. Despite their apparent strangeness, fractals arise in surprising places – from snowflakes and lightning strikes to natural coastlines.

    Researchers at the University of Cambridge, the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, the University of Tennessee, and the Universidad Nacional de La Plata have uncovered an altogether new type of fractal appearing in a class of magnets called spin ices. The discovery was surprising because the fractals were seen in a clean three-dimensional crystal, where they conventionally would not be expected. Even more remarkably, the fractals are visible in dynamical properties of the crystal, and hidden in static ones. These features motivated the appellation of “emergent dynamical fractal”.

    The fractals were discovered in crystals of the material dysprosium titanate, where the electron spins behave like tiny bar magnets. These spins cooperate through ice rules that mimic the constraints that protons experience in water ice. For dysprosium titanate, this leads to very special properties.

    Jonathan Hallén of the University of Cambridge is a PhD student and the lead author on the study. He explains that “at temperatures just slightly above absolute zero the crystal spins form a magnetic fluid.” This is no ordinary fluid, however.

    “With tiny amounts of heat the ice rules get broken in a small number of sites and their north and south poles, making up the flipped spin, separate from each other traveling as independent magnetic monopoles.”

    The motion of these magnetic monopoles led to the discovery here. As Professor Claudio Castelnovo, also from the University of Cambridge, points out: “We knew there was something really strange going on. Results from 30 years of experiments didn’t add up.”

    Referring to a new study on the magnetic noise from the monopoles published earlier this year, Castelnovo continued, “After several failed attempts to explain the noise results, we finally had a eureka moment, realizing that the monopoles must be living in a fractal world and not moving freely in three dimensions, as had always been assumed.”

    In fact, this latest analysis of the magnetic noise showed the monopole’s world needed to look less than three-dimensional, or rather 2.53 dimensional to be precise! Professor Roderich Moessner, Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Germany, and Castelnovo proposed that the quantum tunneling of the spins themselves could depend on what the neighboring spins were doing.

    As Hallén explained, “When we fed this into our models, fractals immediately emerged. The configurations of the spins were creating a network that the monopoles had to move on. The network was branching as a fractal with exactly the right dimension.”

    But why had this been missed for so long?

    Hallén elaborated that, “this wasn’t the kind of static fractal we normally think of. Instead, at longer times the motion of the monopoles would actually erase and rewrite the fractal.”

    This made the fractal invisible to many conventional experimental techniques.

    Working closely with Professors Santiago Grigera of the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, and Alan Tennant of the University of Tennessee, the researchers succeeded in unravelling the meaning of the previous experimental works.

    “The fact that the fractals are dynamical meant they did not show up in standard thermal and neutron scattering measurements,” said Grigera and Tennant. “It was only because the noise was measuring the monopoles motion that it was finally spotted.”

    As regards the significance of the results, which appear in Science this week, Moessner explains: “Besides explaining several puzzling experimental results that have been challenging us for a long time, the discovery of a mechanism for the emergence of a new type of fractal has led to an entirely unexpected route for unconventional motion to take place in three dimensions.”

    Overall, the researchers are interested to see what other properties of these materials may be predicted or explained in light of the new understanding provided by their work, including ties to intriguing properties like topology. With spin ice being one of the most accessible instances of a topological magnet, Moessner said, “the capacity of spin ice to exhibit such striking phenomena makes us hopeful that it holds promise of further surprising discoveries in the cooperative dynamics of even simple topological many-body systems.”

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    University of Cambridge

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  • Team undertakes study of two-dimensional transition metal chalcogenides

    Team undertakes study of two-dimensional transition metal chalcogenides

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    Newswise — Two-dimensional materials, like transition metal dichalcogenide, have applications in public health because of their large surface area and high surface sensitivities, along with their unique electrical, optical, and electrochemical properties. A research team has undertaken a review study of methods used to modulate the properties of two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD). These methods have important biomedical applications, including biosensing.

    The team’s work is published in the journal Nano Research Energy on November 23, 2022.

    The team’s goal is to present a comprehensive summarization of this promising field and show challenges and opportunities available in this research area. “In this review, we focus on the state-of-the-art methods to modulate properties of two-dimensional TMD and their applications in biosensing. In particular, we thoroughly discuss the structure, intrinsic properties, property modulation methods, and biosensing applications of TMD,” said Yu Lei, an assistant professor at the Institute of Materials Research, Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University.

    Since graphene was discovered in 2004, two-dimensional materials, such as TMD, have attracted significant attention. Because of its unique properties, two-dimensional TMD can serve as the atomically thin platforms for energy storage and conversion, photoelectric conversion, catalysis, and biosensing. TMD also displays a wide band structure and has unusual optical properties. Yet another benefit of two-dimensional TMD is that it can be produced in large quantities at a low cost.

    In public health, reliable and affordable in vitro and in vivo detection of biomolecules is essential for disease prevention and diagnosis. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, people have suffered not only from the physical disease, but also from the psychological problems related to extensive exposure to stress. Extensive stress can result in abnormal levels in biomarkers such as serotonin, dopamine, cortisol, and epinephrine. So, it is essential that scientists find non-invasive ways to monitor these biomarkers in body fluids, such as sweat, tears, and saliva. In order for health care professionals to quickly and accurately assess a person’s stress and diagnose psychological disease, biosensors are of significant importance in the diagnostics, environmental monitoring, and forensic industries.

    The team reviewed the use of two-dimensional TMD as the functional material for biosensing, the approaches to modulate the properties of TMD, and different types of TMD-based biosensors including electric, optical, and electrochemical sensors. “Public health study is always a major task in preventing, diagnosing, and fighting off the diseases. Developing ultrasensitive and selective biosensors is critical for diseases prevention and diagnosing,” said Bilu Liu, an associate professor and a principal investigator at Shenzhen Geim Graphene Center, Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University.

    Two-dimensional TMD is a very sensitive platform for biosensing. These two-dimensional TMD based electrical/optical/electrochemical sensors have been readily used for biosensors ranging from small ions and molecules, such as Ca2+, H+, H2O2, NO2, NH3, to biomolecules such as dopamine and cortisol, that are related to central nervous disease, and all the way to molecule complexities, such as bacteria, virus, and protein.

    The research team determined that despite the remarkable potentials, many challenges related to TMD-based biosensors still need to be solved before they can make a real impact. They suggest several possible research directions. The team recommends that the feedback loop assisted by machine learning be used to reduce the testing time needed to build the database needed for finding the proper biomolecules and TMD pairs. Their second recommendation is the use of a feedback loop assisted by machine learning to achieve the on-demand property modulation and biomolecules/TMD database. Knowing that TMD-based composites exhibit excellent performance when constructed into devices, their third recommendation is that surface modifications, such as defects and vacancies, be adopted to improve the activity of the TMD-based composites. Their last recommendation is that low-cost manufacturing methods at low temperature be developed to prepare TMD. The current chemical vapor deposition method used to prepare TMD can lead to cracks and wrinkles. A low-cost, low-temperature method would improve the quality of the films. “As the key technical issues are solved, the devices based on two-dimensional TMD will be the overarching candidates for the new healthcare technologies,” said Lei.

    The Tsinghua University team includes Yichao Bai and Linxuan Sun, and Yu Lei from the Institute of Materials Research, Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School and the Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Thermal Management Engineering and Materials, Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School; along with Qiangmin Yu and Bilu Liu from the Institute of Materials Research, Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, and the Shenzhen Geim Graphene Center, Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute & Institute of Materials Research, Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School.

    This research is funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, Guangdong Innovative and Entrepreneurial Research Team Program, the Shenzhen Basic Research Project, the Scientific Research Start-up Funds at Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, and Shenzhen Basic Research Project.

     

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    About Nano Research Energy 

    Nano Research Energy is launched by Tsinghua University Press, aiming at being an international, open-access and interdisciplinary journal. We will publish research on cutting-edge advanced nanomaterials and nanotechnology for energy. It is dedicated to exploring various aspects of energy-related research that utilizes nanomaterials and nanotechnology, including but not limited to energy generation, conversion, storage, conservation, clean energy, etc. Nano Research Energy will publish four types of manuscripts, that is, Communications, Research Articles, Reviews, and Perspectives in an open-access form.

     

    About SciOpen 

    SciOpen is a professional open access resource for discovery of scientific and technical content published by the Tsinghua University Press and its publishing partners, providing the scholarly publishing community with innovative technology and market-leading capabilities. SciOpen provides end-to-end services across manuscript submission, peer review, content hosting, analytics, and identity management and expert advice to ensure each journal’s development by offering a range of options across all functions as Journal Layout, Production Services, Editorial Services, Marketing and Promotions, Online Functionality, etc. By digitalizing the publishing process, SciOpen widens the reach, deepens the impact, and accelerates the exchange of ideas.

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    Tsinghua University Press

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  • Tech to absorb electromagnetic waves in the 6G band!

    Tech to absorb electromagnetic waves in the 6G band!

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    Newswise — A research team led by Dr. Youn-kyoung Baek and Dr. Jung-goo Lee succeeded in developing the world’s first technology to consecutively manufacture epsilon iron oxide that can absorb millimeter wave with a high coercive force equivalent to that of neodymium (Nd) magnets. The researchers are in the Department of Magnetic Materials in Powder Materials Division at the Korea Institute of Materials Science (KIMS), a government-funded research institute under the Ministry of Science and ICT.

    Iron oxide material with a high-coercive epsilon crystal phase is almost the only magnetic material that absorbs ultra-high frequencies which is a potential 6G frequency band. Until now, it was only formed in a nano-sized particle of 50 nanometers or less. Japan succeeded to produce pure epsilon iron oxide through batch type wet process, but it involves time consuming multi-stage process, resulting in a low yield.

    The research team adopted the aerosol process to solve the low-yield problem and succeeded in producing a composite powder in which epsilon iron oxide nanoparticles are embedded in silica particles by spray-drying precursor solutions in a hot chamber. When the precursor material solution is continuously injected and the droplets are instantly dried, the iron precursor is trapped in the silica xerogel particles and limited to grow during heat treatment. Epsilon iron oxide nanoparticles could be continuously produced through a micrometer-sized powder manufacturing process, which is significant as it showed the possibility of commercialization of millimeter wave absorbing materials.

    While conventional metals that absorb electromagnetic waves have reduced absorption capacity in high-frequency bands or have limitations in controlling frequency bands, epsilon iron oxide has high potential as a material for future communication parts due to its absorption capacity in the ultra-high frequency (30-200GHz) band. Continuous manufacturing technology of epsilon iron oxide with millimeter wave absorption capability can be used for mm-wave 5G/6G wireless communication, radar sensors for driverless car, stealth and low-orbit satellite communication components. In addition, as it is a high-coercivity magnetic material, it can be used for electric motor parts for future mobility.

    Currently, no companies commercially produce products with applied magnetic materials capable of absorbing mm waves. Only two or three companies in the US, Japan, and Germany produce 5G band absorbing and shielding materials. The technology developed by researchers at KIMS is expected to be localized and exported to the global market in the future.

    Principal investigator Dr. Youn-kyoung Baek said, “The epsilon iron oxide can selectively absorb ultra-high frequencies in a wide band (30 to 200 GHz). The significance of the study is that it developed the first continuous manufacturing process of epsilon iron oxides. The technology is expected to accelerate the commercialization of wireless communication devices using millimeter waves, self-driving car radars, and absorber technology for space satellite communication in the future.”

    The research was carried out as a project to develop magnetic composite Materials with tunable magnetic performances of KIMS and funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT. In addition, the research was published in Chemical Communications, a renowned academic journal in materials science published by the Royal Society of Chemistry in the UK on September 23rd. Currently, the research team is discussing technology transfer for mass production of iron oxide absorbing materials with many companies, and is conducting a follow-up study to improve wave absorption capacity to terahertz which is 100 gigahertz (GHz) or higher.

     

    ————————————————————————-

    ###

    About Korea Institute of Materials Science(KIMS)

    KIMS is a non-profit government-funded research institute under the Ministry of Science and ICT of the Republic of Korea. As the only institute specializing in comprehensive materials technologies in Korea, KIMS has contributed to Korean industry by carrying out a wide range of activities related to materials science including R&D, inspection, testing&evaluation, and technology support.

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  • Tracking Explosions with Toughened-Up Tracers

    Tracking Explosions with Toughened-Up Tracers

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    Newswise — What happens in an explosion? Where do the products of that explosion go following the blast? These questions are often difficult to solve. New rugged tracer particles, developed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) researchers, can provide some answers.

    Beyond explosives, many industries may be interested in tracking particulates through harsh environments—which often include high pressures, high temperatures, and different chemicals.  

    “Lots of chemical tracers exist,” said Lance Hubbard, materials scientist supporting PNNL’s national security research. “The challenge is developing one that can survive harsh environments. It took a few years to convince anyone we could do it.”

    Hubbard and his team, along with fellow PNNL researchers April Carman and Michael Foxe, created a tracer that could not only survive but thrive in extreme conditions. Their work was published in MRS Communications.

    Quantum dots and water-soaked glass

    Organic materials, such as fluorescent dyes, are commonly used as tracers for water leaks and tracking cells in biological experiments. While they work great in those conditions, they aren’t so good for tracing material in explosions. Their problem?

    “They burn,” said Hubbard.

    Instead, Hubbard and his team focused on inorganic materials to develop their rugged tracers—particularly quantum dots. Though they fared much better than organic materials in harsh conditions, the research team still needed to protect the quantum dots from the extreme conditions of a chemical explosion.

    “Finding a way to protect the tracer while still maintaining its luminescent intensity proved to be difficult,” said Carman.

    The tracer’s brightness—or luminescent intensity—can be greatly affected by the local environment. Some protective methods can diminish the brightness, making the tracer more difficult to detect. The team focused on using hydrated silica—“basically water-soaked glass” as Hubbard puts it—to protect the quantum dots and maintain their brightness.

    Though previous silica coating methods significantly decreased tracer luminescence, the coated tracers designed by the PNNL team were almost as bright as the original quantum dots. Further testing showed that the particles could survive for long periods of time through a range of pH conditions.

    “We knew we created something special when we saw our results,” said Hubbard.

    Making tracers tunable and mass-producible

    Special is one thing, but useable on the commercial scale is another. Lucky for the PNNL team, their synthesis method was designed from the get-go to be completely scalable to produce mass quantities—from kilograms to potential tons per day.

    Not only can they make large amounts of the tracer, but they can customize them as well. “We can tune both the tracer’s size and color to any specificity,” said Foxe. “The tracer can be fine-tuned to create a mimic of the mass or material that is being tracked. We can also use a variety of sizes with different colors to visualize how an explosion affects particles of different sizes.”

    The tracers are rugged enough to be deployed in harsh environments to track mass and improve scientists’ understanding of environmental fate and transport. They can function under conditions that are too severe for traditional tracers—like in oil and gas refineries or geothermal plants. With tunable parameters and an easy-to-use system, these tracers have many potential applications for tracking material fate and transport in harsh environments.

    Persistence pays off

    The research has now grown from a small initial investment from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research and Development program to encompassing several related projects.

    “We are glad we could keep pursuing this project despite initial skepticism,” said Carman. “We are also thrilled to see where it leads us next.”

    Additional PNNL authors on this research are Clara Reed, Anjelica Bautista, Maurice Lonsway, Nicolas Uhnak, Ryan Sumner, Trevor Cell, Erin Kinney, Nathaniel Smith, and Caleb Allen. Scientists and engineers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Mission Support and Test Services LLC, and Sandia National Laboratories also contributed to the project.

    ###

    About PNNL

    Pacific Northwest National Laboratory draws on its distinguishing strengths in chemistry, Earth sciences, biology and data science to advance scientific knowledge and address challenges in sustainable energy and national security. Founded in 1965, PNNL is operated by Battelle for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. DOE’s Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science. For more information on PNNL, visit PNNL’s News Center. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

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  • Simple semiconductor solutions could boost solar energy generation and enable better space probes

    Simple semiconductor solutions could boost solar energy generation and enable better space probes

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    Newswise — A ‘simple’ tweak to perovskite solar cells during the fabrication stage could help to unlock the untold potential of the renewable energy source, claims research from the University of Surrey.  

    Surrey’s Advanced Technology Institute (ATI) has demonstrated that by precisely controlling the fabrication process, it is possible to regulate and reduce unwanted energy loss in perovskite solar panels.  

    Dr Bowei Li, a lead researcher of the programme at the Advanced Technology Institute, University of Surrey, said: 

    “The future of perovskite solar panels is incredibly exciting, with the promise of not only improving the performance of solar farms and roof panels but many opportunities in powering spacecraft and interstellar probes. 

    “We hope the relatively straightforward approach demonstrated in our study, which tackles recombination losses, can improve the reproducibility, efficiency and stability of perovskite solar cells.” 

    Perovskite solar cells are widely considered the natural successor to silicon-based solar devices because of their high energy conversion efficiency, low development cost, and lightweight nature. Named after a naturally occurring mineral with a structurally similar chemical formula, perovskites are synthetic composites with three-dimensional lattice crystal structures.  

    The University of Surrey’s Advanced Technology Institute is a global leader in research into perovskite solar cells and their contribution to boosting global clean energy generation. 
     

    Dr Wei Zhang, the primary supervisor of the research from the University of Surrey, said: 

    “Perovskites are wonderful semiconductor materials enabling the revolution of next-generation photovoltaic technologies. However, despite unprecedented success in many emerging applications, their full potential has yet to be unlocked.  

    “Our work will foster the understanding of the complex interplay between the passivators and perovskites at the material interfaces and take the perovskite photovoltaics to new heights.”  

    Professor Ravi Silva, the co-supervisor of the research programme and Director of the ATI at the University of Surrey, said: 

    “Net-Zero is impossible if solar energy isn’t a crucial component of the mix. Solar energy is currently the leading technology for large-scale inexpensive green energy harvesting worldwide.  

    “The ATI, and indeed the University of Surrey, is dedicated to making sure that this perovskite technology complements conventional solar modules and is central to the sustainability requirements for tomorrow’s world.” 

    The research has been published by Advanced Energy Materials. It is a collaboration between the University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Swansea University, University of Sheffield, University of Toronto, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. 

    ### 
     

    Notes to editors 

    • Reference: Bowei Li et al; Suppressing Interfacial Recombination with a Strong-Interaction Surface Modulator for Efficient Inverted Perovskite Solar Cells;  Adv. Energy Mater. 2022, 2202868. https://doi.org/10.1002/aenm.202202868 

    • Professor Ravi Silva is available for interview upon request.  

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  • Chris Heckle named manufacturing director at Argonne National Laboratory

    Chris Heckle named manufacturing director at Argonne National Laboratory

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    Newswise — Heckle’s deep technical knowledge and record of innovation to help advance U.S. technological leadership in materials manufacturing at a critical time.

    Globally recognized research and development leader Chris Heckle has been appointed as the first director of the Materials Manufacturing Innovation Center (MMIC) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory. 

    Argonne established the MMIC with the goal of bringing advanced materials and chemical manufacturing technologies — including energy storage and others essential for the clean energy transition — to market faster, by cultivating and sustaining partnerships between the laboratory and the private sector, DOE, universities and other stakeholders.  

    “I’m thrilled for this opportunity to support materials and chemical processing companies by connecting stakeholders and Argonne’s impressive variety of capabilities and people.” — Chris Heckle, incoming director of Argonne’s Materials Manufacturing Innovation Center 

    Heckle most recently served as research director for Inorganic Materials Research and Asia Research Labs for Corning Incorporated. She is a materials informatics champion who over a 25-year career has facilitated technology innovation across business units for multiple industries, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. She brings to Argonne experience in creating a manufacturing platform that opened new market opportunities for Corning in energy storage, as well as a demonstrated record of translating megatrends into technical thrusts and accelerating product timelines through introduction and adoption of new tools. 

    “I’m thrilled for this opportunity to support materials and chemical processing companies by connecting stakeholders and Argonne’s impressive variety of capabilities and people,” Heckle said. ​“And I’m passionate about people development, which is essential to prepare a new generation of technology and manufacturing leaders for our nation.” 

    To help partners commercialize new materials, Argonne manufacturing experts leverage a one-of-a-kind combination of facilities — including the Materials Engineering Research Facility, Advanced Photon Source and Argonne Leadership Computing Facility — to rapidly develop and scale up materials discovered at the laboratory bench (gram-scale) to commercially relevant quantities (hundreds of kilograms) produced using cost-effective, scalable processes. 

    “We are pleased that Chris has chosen to join our team,” said Megan Clifford, associate laboratory director for Science and Technology Partnerships and Outreach at Argonne. ​“Her deep technical knowledge and record of innovation and motivational leadership will guide the laboratory in making meaningful and long-lasting partner connections, to fulfill the MMIC mission of advancing U.S. technological leadership in materials manufacturing at a critical time.”   

    Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation’s first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America’s scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

    The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://​ener​gy​.gov/​s​c​ience.

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  • Researchers cook up a new way to remove microplastics from water

    Researchers cook up a new way to remove microplastics from water

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    Newswise — Researchers at Princeton Engineering have found a way to turn your breakfast food into a new material that can cheaply remove salt and microplastics from seawater.

    The researchers used egg whites to create an aerogel, a lightweight and porous material that can be used in many types of applications, including water filtration, energy storage, and sound and thermal insulation. Craig Arnold, the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and vice dean of innovation at Princeton, works with his lab to create new materials, including aerogels, for engineering applications.

    One day, sitting in a faculty meeting, he had an idea.

    “I was sitting there, staring at the bread in my sandwich,” said Arnold. “And I thought to myself, this is exactly the kind of structure that we need.” So he asked his lab group to make different bread recipes mixed with carbon to see if they could recreate the aerogel structure he was looking for. None of them worked quite right initially, so the team kept eliminating ingredients as they tested, until eventually only egg whites remained.

    “We started with a more complex system,” Arnold said, “and we just kept reducing, reducing, reducing, until we got down to the core of what it was. It was the proteins in the egg whites that were leading to the structures that we needed.”

    Egg whites are a complex system of almost pure protein that — when freeze-dried and heated to 900 degrees Celsius in an environment without oxygen — create a structure of interconnected strands of carbon fibers and sheets of graphene. In a paper published Aug. 24 in Materials Today, Arnold and his coauthors showed that the resulting material can remove salt and microplastics from seawater with 98% and 99% efficiency, respectively.

    “The egg whites even worked if they were fried on the stove first, or whipped,” said Sehmus Ozden, first author on the paper. Ozden is a former postdoctoral research associate at the Princeton Center for Complex Materials and now a scientist at Aramco Research Center. While regular store-bought egg whites were used in initial tests, Ozden said, other similar commercially available proteins produced the same results.

    “Eggs are cool because we can all connect to them and they are easy to get, but you want to be careful about competing against the food cycle,” said Arnold. Because other proteins also worked, the material can potentially be produced in large quantities relatively cheaply and without impacting the food supply. One next step for the researchers, Ozden noted, is refining the fabrication process so it can be used in water purification on a larger scale.

    If this challenge can be solved, the material has significant benefits because it is inexpensive to produce, energy-efficient to use and highly effective. “Activated carbon is one of the cheapest materials used for water purification. We compared our results with activated carbon, and it’s much better,” said Ozden. Compared with reverse osmosis, which requires significant energy input and excess water for operation, this filtration process requires only gravity to operate and wastes no water.

    While Arnold sees water purity as a “major grand challenge,” that is not the only potential application for this material. He is also exploring other uses related to energy storage and insulation.

    The research included contributions from the departments of chemical and biological engineering and geosciences at Princeton and elsewhere. “It’s one thing to make something in the lab,” said Arnold, “and it’s another thing to understand why and how.” Collaborators who helped answer the why and how questions included professors Rodney Priestley and A. James Link from chemical and biological engineering, who helped identify the transformation mechanism of the egg white proteins at the molecular level. Princeton colleagues in geosciences assisted with measurements of water filtration.

    Susanna Monti of the Institute for Chemistry of Organometallic Compounds and Valentina Tozzi from Instituto Nanoscienze and NEST-Scuola Normale Superiore created the theoretical simulations that revealed the transformation of egg white proteins into the aerogel.

    The article, “Egg protein derived ultralightweight hybrid monolithic aerogel for water purification,” was published in the journal Materials Today. Besides Arnold, Monti, Ozden, Priestley, Link and Tozzi, authors include Nikita Dutta, a former graduate student in mechanical and aerospace engineering who is now at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory; Stefania Gill, John Higgins and Nick Caggiano of Princeton University; and Nicola Pugno of the University of Trento and Queen Mary University of London. Support was provided in part by the Princeton Center for Complex Materials and the U.S. National Science Foundation.

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  • Growing pure nanotubes is a stretch, but possible

    Growing pure nanotubes is a stretch, but possible

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    Newswise — HOUSTON – (Nov. 9, 2022) – Like a giraffe stretching for leaves on a tall tree, making carbon nanotubes reach for food as they grow may lead to a long-sought breakthrough.

    Materials theorists Boris Yakobson and Ksenia Bets at Rice University’s George R. Brown School of Engineering show how putting constraints on growing nanotubes could facilitate a “holy grail” of growing batches with a single desired chirality.

    Their paper in Science Advances describes a strategy by which constraining the carbon feedstock in a furnace would help control the “kite” growth of nanotubes. In this method, the nanotube begins to form at the metal catalyst on a substrate, but lifts the catalyst as it grows, resembling a kite on a string.

    Carbon nanotube walls are basically graphene, its hexagonal lattice of atoms rolled into a tube. Chirality refers to how the hexagons are angled within the lattice, between 0 and 30 degrees. That determines whether the nanotubes are metallic or semiconductors. The ability to grow long nanotubes in a single chirality could, for instance, enable the manufacture of highly conductive nanotube fibers or semiconductor channels of transistors.

    Normally, nanotubes grow in random fashion with single and multiple walls and various chiralities. That’s fine for some applications, but many need “purified” batches that require centrifugation or other costly strategies to separate the nanotubes.

    The researchers suggested hot carbon feedstock gas fed through moving nozzles could effectively lead nanotubes to grow for as long as the catalyst remains active. Because tubes with different chiralities grow at different speeds, they could then be separated by length, and slower-growing types could be completely eliminated.

    One additional step that involves etching away some of the nanotubes could then allow specific chiralities to be harvested, they determined.

    The lab’s work to define the mechanisms of nanotube growth led them to think about whether the speed of growth as a function of individual tubes’ chirality could be useful. The angle of “kinks” in the growing nanotubes’ edges determines how energetically amenable they are to adding new carbon atoms.

    “The catalyst particles are moving as the nanotubes grow, and that’s principally important,” said lead author Bets, a researcher in Yakobson’s group. “If your feedstock keeps moving away, you get a moving window where you’re feeding some tubes and not the others.”

    The paper’s reference to Lamarck giraffes — a 19th-century theory of how they evolved such long necks — isn’t entirely out of left field, Bets said.  

    “It works as a metaphor because you move your ‘leaves’ away and the tubes that can reach it continue growing fast, and those that cannot just die out,” she said. “Eventually, all the nanotubes that are just a tiny bit slow will ‘die.’”

    Speed is only part of the strategy. In fact, they suggest nanotubes that are a little slower should be the target to assure a harvest of single chiralities.

    Because nanotubes of different chiralities grow at their own rates, a batch would likely exhibit tiers. Chemically etching the longest nanotubes would degrade them, preserving the next level of tubes. Restoring the feedstock could then allow the second-tier nanotubes to continue growing until they are ready to be culled, Bets said.

    “There are three or four laboratory studies that show nanotube growth can be reversed, and we also know it can be restarted after etching,” she said. “So all the parts of our idea already exist, even if some of them are tricky. Close to equilibrium, you will have the same proportionality between growth and etching speeds for the same tubes. If it’s all nice and clean, then you can absolutely, precisely pick the tubes you target.”

    The Yakobson lab won’t make them, as it focuses on theory, not experimentation. But other labs have turned past Rice theories into products like boron buckyballs.

    “I’m pretty sure every single one of our reviewers were experimentalists, and they didn’t see any contradictions to it working,” Bets said. “Their only complaint, of course, was that they would like experimental results right now, but that’s not what we do.”

    She hopes more than a few labs will pick up the challenge. “In terms of science, it’s usually more beneficial to give ideas to the crowd,” Bets said. “That way, those who have interest can do it in 100 different variations and see which one works. One guy trying it might take 100 years.”

    Yakobson added, “We don’t want to be that ‘guy.’ We don’t have that much time.”

    Yakobson is the Karl F. Hasselmann Professor of Engineering and a professor of materials science and nanoengineering and of chemistry.

    The National Science Foundation (1605848) and the Robert Welch Foundation (C-1490) supported the research.

    -30-

     

    Related stories:

    Oddball edge wins nanotube faceoff – July 29, 2019
    https://news2.rice.edu/2019/07/29/oddball-edge-wins-nanotube-faceoff-2/

    Two-faced edge makes nanotubes obey – July 26, 2018 https://news2.rice.edu/2018/07/26/two-faced-edge-makes-nanotubes-obey-2/

    Graphene grows stronger against the wind – March 12, 2018 https://news2.rice.edu/2018/03/12/graphene-grows-stronger-against-the-wind-2/

     

    Links:

    Dislocation theory of chirality-controlled nanotube growth: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0811946106

    Yakobson Research Group: biygroup.blogs.rice.edu

    Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering: msne.rice.edu

    George R. Brown School of Engineering: engineering.rice.edu

    This release can be found online at https://news.rice.edu/news/2022/growing-pure-nanotubes-stretch-possible.

    Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

    Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 4,240 undergraduates and 3,972 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 1 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.

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  • Joseph A. Johnson Award Goes to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Professor

    Joseph A. Johnson Award Goes to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Professor

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    Newswise — WASHINGTON, Nov. 9, 2022 – AIP and the National Society of Black Physicists have awarded Trevor Rhone the 2022 Joseph A. Johnson III Award for Excellence and Cacey Bester an Honorable Mention.

    Now in its third year, the award recognizes early-career scientists who demonstrate scientific ingenuity and powerful mentorship and service – the core values of NSBP founder Joseph A. Johnson.

    “Since its inception, this award has seen high-quality candidates across the board.  This was as true this year as any other,” said Michael Moloney, CEO of AIP. “We are pleased to recognize both Dr. Rhone and Dr. Bester for their exceptional science and dedication to their students. Their contributions to the physical science community exemplify the legacy of Dr. Joseph A. Johnson.”

    Rhone, an assistant professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), searches for novel two-dimensional magnetic materials using a combination of computer simulations and artificial intelligence. Some estimates put the number of possible candidate materials at 10 to the power of 100 – approximately the same number of atoms in the observable universe. Instead of relying on slow and laborious experiments to find a material with desirable properties, Rhone uses AI as a guide to accelerate materials discovery.

    “When you’re at home, and you want to find a recipe to bake a cake, you might ask Alexa,” he said. “Alexa finds a recipe and tells you what ingredients you need and how to make it. Perhaps one day, we’ll ask an ‘Atom-a’ equivalent for the recipe to make the next generation of hard drives for data storage.”

    Growing up in Jamaica, Rhone learned the importance of a good education. He obtained his undergraduate degree at Macalester College, then earned his doctorate from Columbia University for experimental studies of two-dimensional electron systems. He transitioned to materials informatics research while working at the National Institute of Materials Science in Japan and as a Future Faculty Leaders postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University before becoming an assistant professor at RPI.

    In the physics department at RPI, Rhone co-founded the DEI committee, which actively promotes equity and inclusion in the classroom. This work follows a history of his mentoring underrepresented minority students, providing physics demonstrations for high schoolers, and volunteering with NSBP.

    Rhone says many mentors supported and encouraged him along his journey, but his father was the most influential of all.

    “He would tell me stories about how he influenced the lives of others. There’s one story where he, a playwright, encouraged someone to pursue theater, his lifelong passion, despite the threat of great hardship. My father gave people the courage to pursue their dreams and helped them to find happiness doing so,” said Rhone. “Mentoring, teaching, and supporting the physics community I feel helps me to honor the memory of my father. This award is a nice reminder of what is important and it motivates me to do more.”

    “Dr. Rhone and Dr. Bester are advancing the physical sciences in so many ways,” said Hakeem Oluseyi, president of the National Society of Black Physicists. “Their research is creative and cutting-edge. Meanwhile, their emphasis of mentoring and community-building is inspiring.”

    Bester, an assistant professor at Swarthmore College, studies granular materials, a subfield of soft matter.

    “Individual grains, such as sand, coffee, and rice, are easy to describe,” she said. “But if you have thousands, or even millions of those grains, then that becomes extremely challenging. That’s because collectively, the grains can behave like a solid in some instances, or like a liquid in other instances.”

    In her lab, Bester conducts jamming and creeping experiments. Undergraduates play a key role, confining grains and studying the transition from liquid to solid and connecting these ideas to geological implications.

    She hopes to give her students the same experiences she had as a young researcher. At Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, Bester was the only student in her introductory physics class taught by Stephen McGuire, a former NSBP president.

    “It was super intimidating. I had to answer every question,” she said. “It was really scary at first, but I came to enjoy having that attention. Not only did we do the required curriculum, but I learned about what current physics research looked like.”

    From there, Bester participated in a Research for Undergraduates Experience at the University of Chicago, where she studied droplets splashing. She pursued the same line of research in Chicago for her doctorate, then worked as postdoctoral research associate at Duke University before becoming an assistant professor at Swarthmore College.

    “It feels really amazing to reach the point where my work is being acknowledged in this way,” said Bester. “It means so much to me, especially to be acknowledged by people that I have admired for such a long time: leaders of the National Society of Black Physicists and the American Institute of Physics.”

    The award and honorable mention will be presented at the National Society of Black Physicists 2022 Conference on Nov. 9 in Charlottesville, Virginia.

    ###

    ABOUT THE JOSEPH A. JOHNSON III AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE

    Joseph A. Johnson III, of Florida A&M University, was a pioneering and renowned experimental physicist, mentor to many Black doctoral students and a founder of the National Society of Black Physicists. In honor of his iconic legacy, the American Institute of Physics and NSBP have partnered to recognize an NSBP physicist who exemplifies Johnson’s ingenuity as a scientist and passion for mentorship and service. This honor comes with a $5,000 award along with an invitation to give physics department colloquia at partner universities.

    ABOUT NSBP

    Founded in 1977 at Morgan State University, the mission of the National Society of Black Physicists is to promote the professional well-being of African American physicists and physics students within the international scientific community and within society at large. The organization seeks to develop and support efforts to increase opportunities for African Americans in physics and to increase their numbers and visibility of their scientific work. It also seeks to develop activities and programs that highlight and enhance the benefits of the scientific contributions that African American physicists provide for the international community. The society seeks to raise the general knowledge and appreciation of physics in the African American community.

    ABOUT AIP

    The mission of AIP (American Institute of Physics) is to advance, promote, and serve the physical sciences for the benefit of humanity. AIP is a federation that advances the success of our 10 Member Societies and an institute that operates as a center of excellence supporting the physical sciences enterprise. In its role as an institute, AIP uses policy analysis, social science, and historical research to promote future progress in the physical sciences. AIP is a 501(c)(3) membership corporation of scientific societies.

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  • New quantum phase discovered for developing hybrid materials

    New quantum phase discovered for developing hybrid materials

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    Newswise — Osaka, Japan – If you have ever watched water freeze to ice, you have witnessed what physicists call a “phase transition.” Osaka Metropolitan University scientists have discovered an unprecedented phase transition during which crystals achieve amorphous characteristics while retaining their crystalline properties. Their findings contribute to developing hybrid materials for use in harsh environments, such as outer space. The results were published in Physical Review B.

    A typical phase transition exhibited by crystalline solids involves a change in the crystal structure. Such structural phase transitions usually occur at finite temperatures. However, controlling the chemical composition of the crystal can lower the transition temperature to absolute zero (−273°C). The transition point at absolute zero is called the structural quantum critical point.

    In the dielectric compound Ba1-xSrxAl2O4, the structural phase transition is driven by an acoustic soft mode, the atomic vibration pattern of which is similar to that of sound waves. The compound comprises an AlO4 tetrahedral network and Ba/Sr atoms. The research team led by Associate Professor Yui Ishii from the Graduate School of Engineering at Osaka Metropolitan University has discovered that a highly disordered atomic arrangement is formed in the AlO4 network at chemical compositions near the structural quantum critical point, resulting in both characteristics of crystalline and amorphous materials.

    Ba1-xSrxAl2O4 is a crystalline solid. However, the researchers found that at higher Sr concentrations than the structural quantum critical point, Ba1-xSrxAl2O4 exhibits the thermal characteristic of amorphous materials, i.e., low thermal conductivity comparable to that of glass materials (e.g., silica glass). They observed that a part of the atomic structure loses periodicity because of the incoherently stopped acoustic soft mode. As a result, a combination of a glassy Al-O network and a periodic Ba arrangement is realized.

    This hybrid state, which the research team was the first to discover, can be created simply by mixing raw materials uniformly and heating them.

    Professor Ishii concluded, “In principle, the phenomenon revealed in this research can occur in materials exhibiting acoustic soft modes. Applying this technique to various materials will possibly help us create hybrid materials that combine the physical properties of crystals, such as optical properties and electrical conductivity, with the low thermal conductivity of amorphous materials. In addition, the high heat resistance of crystals can be utilized to develop insulation materials that can be used in harsh environments, such as outer space.”

     

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    About OMU

    Osaka Metropolitan University is a new public university established in April 2022, formed by merger between Osaka City University and Osaka Prefecture University. For more research news, visit https://www.upc-osaka.ac.jp/new-univ/en-research/research/ or follow @OsakaMetUniv_en and #OMUScience.

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    Osaka Metropolitan University

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  • KIMM Develops a Smart Valve that Automatically Detects and Isolates Ruptures in a Pipeline System

    KIMM Develops a Smart Valve that Automatically Detects and Isolates Ruptures in a Pipeline System

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    Newswise — A smart valve that automatically isolates pipe ruptures caused by accidents was developed for the first time in South Korea.

    The Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials, an institution under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Science and ICT (President Sang Jin Park, hereafter referred to as KIMM), has successfully developed “K-smart valve”, that is capable of quickly detecting and isolating ruptured pipes on its own and recovering key functions in a pipeline system when a leakage occurs due to unexpected pipe breakage at an industrial site.

    ※ K-Smart Valve: The “Smart Valve” for the use of a Naval Ship was first developed by the US Navy and is widely referred to by this term as a proper noun. The valve developed by the researchers at KIMM works with completely a different mechanism (algorithm), which led to it being named as the “K-Smart Valve.”

    The research team led by Dr. Byungchang Jung, a principal researcher at the KIMM Department of System Dynamics, applied an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to the K-Smart Valve to autonomously recognize a leakage and isolate ruptured pipes without any control command from an operator. 

    Most piping systems in naval ships, general ships, offshore plants, etc., has a Valve Remote Control System (VRCS). Using the VRCS, an operator can open and close valves remotely if necessary while monitoring the pressure, flow, and temperature in a pipeline. 

    However, when unexpected accidents such as pipe breakages with communication network loss or electric power loss occur, it is not easy for workers to recognize the situation and respond calmly. Moreover, if they are not quick enough to respond, such incidents could lead to greater secondary damage. 

    KIMM’s K-Smart Valve was developed with the primary purpose of being applied to the pipeline system in a naval ship such as the fire extinguishing and cooling systems. In the event of unexpected pipe damage from a threat during combat, the K-Smart Valve can promptly restore original functions of the pipeline system (e.g. utilizing of fire-extinguishing water or cooling water) without any control from crews to minimize secondary damage caused by the spread of fire or overheating of weapon systems.

    The K-Smart Valve consists of a valve body, two pressure sensors, an actuator and a control module. A remote control valve can simply become the K-Smart Valve by embedding the AI algorithm in a control module in the remote control valve. Thus, it is possible to easily build an autonomous recovery system using the K-Smart Valves without significant changes of a VRCS that is already installed in any pipeline system. 

    Dr. Jung stated, “The K-Smart Valve can prevent human life and property losses in various industrial sites through rapid recovery in the event of a pipe breakage accident.” He added, “In the future, the K-Smart Valve will be widely used for unmanned technology not only in the military, such as for naval ships, but also in general ships and onshore and offshore plants at industrial sites.”

    This study was conducted as part of the “AI-based machine system predictive diagnosis and accident response technology” project, a core project at KIMM. There are plans underway to begin developing practical applications through the civil-military technology transfer project in 2023 in collaboration with BY Controls, Inc. and Pusan National University, with the goal of applying the technology to the fire extinguishing system of navy vessels.

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    The Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) is a non-profit government-funded research institute under the Ministry of Science and ICT. Since its foundation in 1976, KIMM is contributing to economic growth of the nation by performing R&D on key technologies in machinery and materials, conducting reliability test evaluation, and commercializing the developed products and technologies.

    The research result of this project was published in IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, No. 27*, a renowned academic journal in the field of automation and control systems.

    * Publication Title: Development of Autonomous Recovery System for Pipeline of Naval Ships by Using a Multistage Control Algorithm (2022.04.)

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    National Research Council of Science and Technology

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  • Building with Nanoparticles, From the Bottom Up

    Building with Nanoparticles, From the Bottom Up

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    Newswise — Researchers at MIT have developed a technique for precisely controlling the arrangement and placement of nanoparticles on a material, like the silicon used for computer chips, in a way that does not damage or contaminate the surface of the material.

    The technique, which combines chemistry and directed assembly processes with conventional fabrication techniques, enables the efficient formation of high-resolution, nanoscale features integrated with nanoparticles for devices like sensors, lasers, and LEDs, which could boost their performance.

    Transistors and other nanoscale devices are typically fabricated from the top down — materials are etched away to reach the desired arrangement of nanostructures. But creating the smallest nanostructures, which can enable the highest performance and new functionalities, requires expensive equipment and remains difficult to do at scale and with the desired resolution.

    A more precise way to assemble nanoscale devices is from the bottom up. In one scheme, engineers have used chemistry to “grow” nanoparticles in solution, drop that solution onto a template, arrange the nanoparticles, and then transfer them to a surface. However, this technique also involves steep challenges. First, thousands of nanoparticles must be arranged on the template efficiently. And transferring them to a surface typically requires a chemical glue, large pressure, or high temperatures, which could damage the surfaces and the resulting device.

    The MIT researchers developed a new approach to overcome these limitations. They used the powerful forces that exist at the nanoscale to efficiently arrange particles in a desired pattern and then transfer them to a surface without any chemicals or high pressures, and at lower temperatures. Because the surface material remains pristine, these nanoscale structures can be incorporated into components for electronic and optical devices, where even minuscule imperfections can hamper performance.

    “This approach allows you, through engineering of forces, to place the nanoparticles, despite their very small size, in deterministic arrangements with single-particle resolution and on diverse surfaces, to create libraries of nanoscale building blocks that can have very unique properties, whether it is their light-matter interactions, electronic properties, mechanical performance, etc.,” says Farnaz Niroui, the EE Landsman Career Development Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at MIT, a member of the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics, and senior author on a new paper describing the work. “By integrating these building blocks with other nanostructures and materials we can then achieve devices with unique functionalities that would not be readily feasible to make if we were to use the conventional top-down fabrication strategies alone.”

    The research is published in Science Advances. Niroui’s co-authors are lead author Weikun “Spencer” Zhu, a graduate student in the Department of Chemical Engineering, as well as EECS graduate students Peter F. Satterthwaite, Patricia Jastrzebska-Perfect, and Roberto Brenes.

    Use the forces

    To begin their fabrication method, known as nanoparticle contact printing, the researchers use chemistry to create nanoparticles with a defined size and shape in a solution. To the naked eye, this looks like a vial of colored liquid, but zooming in with an electron microscope would reveal millions of cubes, each just 50 nanometers in size. (A human hair is about 80,000 nanometers wide.)

    The researchers then make a template in the form of a flexible surface covered with nanoparticle-sized guides, or traps, that are arranged in the shape they want the nanoparticles to take. After adding a drop of nanoparticle solution to the template, they use two nanoscale forces to move the particles into the right position. The nanoparticles are then transferred onto arbitrary surfaces.

    At the nanoscale, different forces become dominant (just like gravity is a dominant force at the macroscale). Capillary forces are dominant when the nanoparticles are in liquid and van der Waals forces are dominant at the interface between the nanoparticles and the solid surface they are in contact with. When the researchers add a drop of liquid and drag it across the template, capillary forces move the nanoparticles into the desired trap, placing them precisely in the right spot. Once the liquid dries, van der Waals forces hold those nanoparticles in position.

    “These forces are ubiquitous and can often be detrimental when it comes to the fabrication of nanoscale objects as they can cause the collapse of the structures. But we are able to come up with ways to control these forces very precisely to use them to control how things are manipulated at the nanoscale,” says Zhu.

    They design the template guides to be the right size and shape, and in the precisely proper arrangement so the forces work together to arrange the particles. The nanoparticles are then printed onto surfaces without a need for any solvents, surface treatments, or high temperatures. This keeps the surfaces pristine and properties intact while allowing yields of more than 95 percent. To promote this transfer, the surface forces need to be engineered so that the van der Waals forces are strong enough to consistently promote particles to release from the template and attach to the receiving surface when placed in contact.

    Unique shapes, diverse materials, scalable processing

    The team used this technique to arrange nanoparticles into arbitrary shapes, such as letters of the alphabet, and then transferred them to silicon with very high position accuracy. The method also works with nanoparticles that have other shapes, such as spheres, and with diverse material types. And it can transfer nanoparticles effectively onto different surfaces, like gold or even flexible substrates for next-generation electrical and optical structures and devices.

    Their approach is also scalable, so it can be extended to be used toward fabrication of real-world devices.

    Niroui and her colleagues are now working to leverage this approach to create even more complex structures and integrate it with other nanoscale materials to develop new types of electronic and optical devices.

    This work was supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program.

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    Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

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  • Model calculates energetics of piercing fangs, claws and other biological weapons

    Model calculates energetics of piercing fangs, claws and other biological weapons

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    Newswise — CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Researchers have created a model that can calculate the energetics involved when one organism stabs another with its fangs, thorns, spines or other puncturing parts. Because the model can be applied to a variety of organisms, it will help scientists study and compare many types of biological puncturing tools, researchers said. It also will help engineers develop new systems to efficiently pierce materials or resist being pierced.

    The new findings are reported in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

    “The idea behind this was to come up with a quantitative framework for comparing a variety of biological puncture systems with each other,” said Philip Anderson, a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign professor of evolution, ecology and behavior who led the research with postdoctoral researcher Bingyang Zhang. “An initial question of this research was how do we even measure these different systems to make them comparable.”

    “It’s a challenging problem to predict the properties of biological systems,” Zhang said.

    Animals and plants deploy a variety of strategies for stabbing prey or defending themselves from other organisms, and even those that use similar strategies or tools alter those tools to meet their specific needs, the researchers said. Their targets also differ.

    “In vipers, for example, some bite mammals, which means they must puncture through soft tissues encased in skin, while others target reptiles, which have scales, making them stiffer and harder to pierce,” said Anderson, who studies the mechanics and energetics of biological puncturing systems.

    Other organisms, like parasitoid wasps, may use their ovipositors to burrow through the hides of caterpillars but also can penetrate fruit or even wood, he said.

    To develop a model that can be applied to a variety of systems, Zhang determined the key factors that must be included in any calculations of the energetics involved. These include changes in the kinetic energy as the puncturing tool is used, but also take into account the material properties of the target tissue.

    This involves calculations describing how the initial kinetic energy drives a puncturing tool into a material, opening up new surfaces in the material as the fracture propagates. It also takes into consideration the frictional resistance and elasticity of the target tissue.

    The calculations were aimed at tapered puncturing tools, which are common in biological systems, the researchers said.

    Anderson is deploying the new model to aid his studies of puncturing organisms like viper fangs, stingray spines and parasitoid wasp ovipositors.  

    “If we know the morphology or the shape of the damage created by a puncture tool, we can use this model to predict how much energy was expended during a puncture scenario,” Zhang said. “Or we can predict different aspects of the material’s property, for example, how it will fracture, which will be useful in both engineering and biological applications.”

    The National Science Foundation supports this research.

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    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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  • ‘Smart plastic’ material is step forward toward soft, flexible robotics and electronics

    ‘Smart plastic’ material is step forward toward soft, flexible robotics and electronics

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    Newswise — Inspired by living things from trees to shellfish, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin set out to create a plastic much like many life forms that are hard and rigid in some places and soft and stretchy in others­. Their success — a first, using only light and a catalyst to change properties such as hardness and elasticity in molecules of the same type — has brought about a new material that is 10 times as tough as natural rubber and could lead to more flexible electronics and robotics.

    The findings are published today in the journal Science.

    “This is the first material of its type,” said Zachariah Page, assistant professor of chemistry and corresponding author on the paper. “The ability to control crystallization, and therefore the physical properties of the material, with the application of light is potentially transformative for wearable electronics or actuators in soft robotics.”

    Scientists have long sought to mimic the properties of living structures, like skin and muscle, with synthetic materials. In living organisms, structures often combine attributes such as strength and flexibility with ease. When using a mix of different synthetic materials to mimic these attributes, materials often fail, coming apart and ripping at the junctures between different materials.

    Oftentimes, when bringing materials together, particularly if they have very different mechanical properties, they want to come apart,” Page said. Page and his team were able to control and change the structure of a plastic-like material, using light to alter how firm or stretchy the material would be.

    Chemists started with a monomer, a small molecule that binds with others like it to form the building blocks for larger structures called polymers that were similar to the polymer found in the most commonly used plastic. After testing a dozen catalysts, they found one that, when added to their monomer and shown visible light, resulted in a semicrystalline polymer similar to those found in existing synthetic rubber. A harder and more rigid material was formed in the areas the light touched, while the unlit areas retained their soft, stretchy properties.

    Because the substance is made of one material with different properties, it was stronger and could be stretched farther than most mixed materials.

    The reaction takes place at room temperature, the monomer and catalyst are commercially available, and researchers used inexpensive blue LEDs as the light source in the experiment. The reaction also takes less than an hour and minimizes use of any hazardous waste, which makes the process rapid, inexpensive, energy efficient and environmentally benign.

    The researchers will next seek to develop more objects with the material to continue to test its usability.

    “We are looking forward to exploring methods of applying this chemistry towards making 3D objects containing both hard and soft components,” said first author Adrian Rylski, a doctoral student at UT Austin.

    The team envisions the material could be used as a flexible foundation to anchor electronic components in medical devices or wearable tech. In robotics, strong and flexible materials are desirable to improve movement and durability.

    Henry L. Cater, Keldy S. Mason, Marshall J. Allen, Anthony J. Arrowood, Benny D. Freeman and Gabriel E. Sanoja of The University of Texas at Austin also contributed to the research.

    The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Robert A. Welch Foundation.

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    University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin)

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