20 most recent innovations in materials

Bendable Concrete

Thu, 18 Aug 2016 00:00:00 Z

Concrete may generally be a good choice for sidewalks, but it is a brittle material – this means that it needs to be poured thick, in order to keep those sidewalks from cracking under pressure. Scientists from Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, however, are developing an alternative. They've created bendable concrete that they say could be easily applied in the form of relatively thin, light paving slabs.

Ordinarily, concrete is made from a mix of cement, gravel, sand and water. The new material, known as ConFlexPave, additionally contains polymer microfibers. These are thinner than the width of a human hair, and serve to distribute loads evenly across the entire slab, instead of keeping them focused in one location.

Snow Chain Made From Elastollan

Fri, 10 Jun 2016 00:00:00 Z

A French textile and rubber company called Joubert Productions has put snow chains on the market in Europe that have chain links made entirely of plastic. The chains use Elastollan, the thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) from BASF.

Although there are already a slew of different plastic chain-type sets on the market in the United States and abroad, what differentiates this technology is the materials incorporated and the molding technique used to put the chains together.

Along with BASF's support in optimizing the component geometry and production, designers at Joubert Productions came up with a snow-chain design that has each unit made from two Elastollan grades: B90A15 and B60A10WH.

The materials meet the ONORM 5117 standard (which applies across Europe), are suitable for different tire sizes, and are easy to fit. The Elastollan versions are abrasion resistant, flexible at low temperatures, and resistant to loose chips and road salt. Better yet, they provide an optimum grip on ice and snow.

For this new plastic application, Elastollan offered an excellent combination of lightweight construction and serial production. The conventional metal chain mesh is replaced by two Elastollan grades of different colors that chemically adhere to one another in the injection-molding process, so they do not have to undergo additional assembly.

The black Elastollan B90A15, which has a harder setting, displays very good mechanical properties along with great flexibility at low temperatures. The red Elastollan B60A10WH is more flexible and easy flowing.

In compact injection molding, the black chain links are overmolded with the red Elastollan in one mold and are joined chemically. Because TPU adheres to TPU very well, there is no need for another assembly step. Metal chains of this type require several assembly steps.

The Austrian standard ONORM 5117 is designed for metallic chain links that cover the full tread of tires and must be in contact with the road surface no matter which position the wheel is in. Due to the outstanding road grip of BASF's TPU, the new plastic snow chains enable car drivers to enjoy the best possible control over their vehicles on snow-covered roads. Since the Elastollan links are much lighter than the conventional metal mesh, the snow chains are easy to handle and quick to remove.

Wearable Wood

Thu, 09 Jun 2016 00:00:00 Z

Ligneah is the first fashion and design material made from solid wood that offers the look, feel and performance of leather at a significantly lower production and environmental cost.

To create this novel textile, cotton is adhered to a thin layer of wood veneer then subjected to a laser process, creating thousands of microcuts that soften and make it pliable. The result is a 100% natural, beautiful, versatile, and cruelty-free "fabric" that has applications in fashion, furniture, and automotive, among other uses.

Transparent Wood

Mon, 30 May 2016 00:00:00 Z

Wood is a great material because it’s cheap, renewable, and versatile. But this crazy transparent wood that scientists in Sweden brewed up is nuts. It could replace glass for some seriously eye-catching architecture, and even be used in cheap solar panels or windows.

Researchers at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden developed the material, which they say is suitable for mass production. The transparent wood could be used to build houses that let in more natural light, thus cutting your electric bill. Their findings were published in the American Chemical Society journal, Biomacromolecules.

The process begins by removing the organic compound that makes the wood brown. “The difference compared with timber is that we have removed lignin, but added a polymer to increase strength and provide transparency,” Lars Berglund, who led the study, told Gizmodo. “We can create veneer from this material and then laminate it into larger structures, such as load-bearing panels and beams.”

It’s not the first time wood has been used in surprising ways: Last year, researchers at the University of Wisconsin used wood to make computer microchips. This week’s development out of Sweden takes a natural, millennia-old material from the earth, and turns it into a futuristic, low-cost, renewable alternative to glass. Now, I’m eagerly awaiting moving into my ghostly, scifi, transparent log cabin.

Cheaper, Transparent Smart Skin Powers Itself

Mon, 18 Apr 2016 00:00:00 Z

Flexible, wearable sensors open the door for everything from more effective health monitoring to robots with a sense of touch that can respond to stimuli like humans. While numerous electronic skin technologies have been developed, getting costs down has remained a problem. A Chinese team of scientists has now developed a new transparent smart skin that they claim is not only cheaper to produce, but is also able to harvest mechanical energy to power itself from movement.

The researchers say that previous attempts to increase the sensitivity of electronic skins has generally meant a corresponding increase in the number of electrodes, thereby also making them more expensive. Some smart skins also need an external power source, which means more wires. Other technologies, such as the Paper Skin, have impressive capabilities, but their lack of transparency limits their potential for use in wearables.

Made of ultra-thin plastic films, the researchers' new skin achieves a touch resolution of 1.9 mm using just four silver-nanowire electrodes and an analog localizing technique. The system also includes a component which creates electric charge through friction in a similar fashion to the University of Wisconsin-Madison's nanogenerator car.

Energy is created through the triboelectric effect, harnessing the electrical charge created when certain materials come into contact with each other, like when you run a comb through your hair. The principle has been used to generate electricity in everything from clothing to touchscreens, and means the smart skin could harvest energy from the movement of prosthetic fingers without the need for external batteries.

The new smart skin's creators say it's sensitive enough to pinpoint the location and force of an interaction, and can even detect a bee flying toward or away from the surface. It is also electrically stable, with the smart skin subjected to over 30,000 cycles and maintaining the same level of output.

Ultimately, the team suggests their technology could move us a step closer to offering robots and prosthetics with a sense of touch at a reasonable price.

The team's study appears in the journal ACS Nano.

Coating Highlights Microscopic Cracks

Tue, 19 Jan 2016 00:00:00 Z

Whether they're on airplanes, bridges or pipelines, even the tiniest of cracks can fast lead to catastrophic failures. That's why it's important to identify them as early as possible, before they get out of hand. With that in mind, scientists at the University of Illinois have created a new polymer coating that can be applied to a wide variety of structural materials. When those materials crack – even a little – the polymer changes color to let inspectors know that something's up.

Designed by a team led by professors Nancy Sottos and Scott White, the polymer contains epoxy resin microcapsules filled with a light-yellow pH-sensitive dye.

As long as no damage occurs, those capsules remain intact. However, should a crack form (as small as 10 micrometers in width), the capsules in that area burst and release the dye. That dye chemically reacts with the epoxy, changing from yellow to bright red in color. The larger the crack, the greater the amount of dye reacts, and the more pronounced the color-change.

According to the researchers, the polymer has been successfully tested on materials including metal, glass and other polymers. It's also reasonably inexpensive, as it only needs to be composed of five percent microcapsules in order to work effectively.

Along with other possible applications, they're now looking at incorporating the polymer into a self-healing plastic that they previously created. In that case, an initial color-change would indicate that a crack had formed, while a secondary change would indicate that it had subsequently healed.

Glue Bonds Metal At Room Temperature

Thu, 14 Jan 2016 00:00:00 Z

The MesoGlue can bond metal to metal without heat, eliminating the risk of damage from soldering or welding materials togheter.

Created by a team from Northeastern University, the MesoGlue consists of nanorods with a metal core, which have been coated with either indium or gallium. To use the glue, one surface of the material to be bonded is coated with the indium rods, while the other material surface is coated with the gallium rods.

When these rods are then brought into contact, their “teeth” interlace, causing the iridium and gallium to form a liquid that transforms to a solid when it touches the metal core of the rods. The result is a powerful adhesive as strong and conductive as a metal bond, but accomplished at room temperature.

Paper Capable Of Storing Energy

Mon, 14 Dec 2015 00:00:00 Z

A new kind of paper has the remarkable ability to store energy like a supercapacitor. It comes from researchers at Sweden’s Linköping University’s Laboratory of Organic Electronics and it has the potential to turn a new chapter for renewable energy.

The so-called "power paper" was made from cellulose fibers that were subjected to high-pressure water until they broke down into fibers as thin as 20 nanometers in diameter. Next, the fibers were coated in an electrically charged polymer and fashioned into a round sheet.

Each sheet, which is 15 centimeters in diameter and a few tenths of a millimeter thick can store as much as supercapacitors currently available on the market. The material can be recharged hundreds of times and each charge only takes a few seconds.

The paper is waterproof and was created with no dangerous chemicals or materials. It’s also quite strong: Just for kicks, the researchers made an origami swan using one piece of power paper.

The researchers also teamed up with KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Innventia, the Technical University of Denmark and the University of Kentucky to develop the paper.

The power paper currently holds four world records: highest charge and capacitance in organic electronics, highest measured current in an organic conductor, highest capacity to simultaneously conduct ions and electrons and highest transconductance in a transistor.

What’s next? Creating a method to mass-produce the power paper. In fact, the researchers just received funding to develop a paper machine that will output the material.

Moldable Plastic Offers Quick Fixes

Mon, 16 Nov 2015 00:00:00 Z

The pocket-sized, bioplastic FORMcard can be softened in hot water to create a malleable plastic that will harden to create a quick fix in emergency situations.

The FORMcards are made up of a non-toxic, starch-based bioplastic that will soften quickly when placed in a cup of hot water. The material will stick to plastic when hot, offering a quick fix for broken tools—especially when there is not enough surface area for glue to do the job. Aside from fixing tools, the FORMcards can also be softened and shaped into bespoke stands for smartphones, cameras, or other small devices.

The FORMcards were specifically designed to be small enough to store in a wallet as well as fit in a standard cup, and the material can be softened and used again.

Transparent Coating Keeps Solar Cells Cool

Thu, 24 Sep 2015 00:00:00 Z

Stanford engineers have developed a transparent silicon overlay that can increase the efficiency of solar cells by keeping them cool. The cover collects and then radiates heat directly into space, without interfering with incoming photons. If mass-produced, the development could be used to cool down any device in the open air – for instance, to complement air conditioning in cars.

After a full day in the sun, solar cells in California can approach temperatures of 80° C (175° F), even in winter months. Excessive heat can pose problems because, while the cells need sunlight to harvest energy, they also lose efficiency as they heat up. A standard silicon cell, for example, will drop from 20 to 19 percent efficiency by heating up just 10° C (18° F) or so.

Laptops address the overheating problem with the help of carefully engineered fans and heat sinks, but for solar panels and other devices that work in the open air, space itself could serve as heat sink par excellence. The coolness of space, approaching absolute zero, would negate the need for elaborate and expensive heat dissipation contraptions – if only we had a way to access it from the ground.

The silica (SiO2) solar panel cover devised by Prof. Shanhui Fan and colleagues at Stanford is successfully making use of space as the largest of heat sinks. It does so by collecting and then radiating heat as infrared electromagnetic waves, which can easily travel through the atmosphere, out into space. The coating is transparent, so it won't interfere with the solar cell's light collecting ability, and improves on the heat dissipation of the silicon found in most cells.

The researchers tested their technology on a solar thermal collector, comparing a "bare" collector with two possible heat radiating mechanisms that used, respectively, silica and photonic crystals (a nanoscale pattern affecting the motion of photons) for heat dissipation. They found the latter to be the most effective.

According to the study results, the overlay allowed visible light to pass through to the solar cells while cooling the underlying absorber by as much as 23° F (13° C). This translates to an absolute efficiency gain of over one percentage point which, although it may not sound like much, would add up to something substantial over the life of the cell.

There are a number of improvements that could further benefit the cell's cooling (and efficiency). The overlays are thought to work best in dry and clear environments, the ideal spots for large solar arrays. Also, because testing was done during winter, the collectors had to be tilted by 60 degrees toward the south to maximize solar irradiance, reducing access to the sky (and cooling ability with it). Finally, elements of the more conventional convective cooling could also be added to the silica cover.

Fan and team are optimistic about scaling up production for commercial applications. They believe the technology could apply to any instance where an outdoors system needs effective heat dispersal, such as to cool down cars to save on air conditioning (and mileage) without affecting aesthetics.

Squishy Glassware

Fri, 07 Aug 2015 00:00:00 Z

If you’re clumsy, or have kids, your kitchen cupboards are probably filled with ugly but necessary plastic drinkware. It doesn’t have to be that way, though, because it turns out someone has created crystal clear drinking glasses made from squishy, shatterproof silicone.

Silicone bakeware and other kitchen accessories already exist, but they’re usually completely opaque—making them look like cheap plastic. They won’t break when accidentally dropped, but you also probably don’t want to use them to serve guests, or even your clumsiest of visitors.

But somehow this glassware, called Shupua in Japan, is made from flexible silicone that’s completely transparent, making it look just like glass. You can squeeze it, you can drop it, you can even toss it in the sink from across the kitchen and it simply will not break. And because it’s made from silicone which is a poor conductor of heat, the Shupua glasses will also help insulate a cold beverage, and even reduce the amount of condensation on the outside so they’re easier to pick up on a humid day.

Map Changes With Weather Conditions

Wed, 29 Jul 2015 00:00:00 Z

‘BATH °C Thermo Color map’ by Camilla Hempleman is a hand held activated map, based on her home city of Bath, England. Using thermochromic inks and tyvek fabric the map is activated at different temperatures, revealing layers of hand illustrated buildings and attractions, showing the best places to visit depending on the weather. Designed as a roll map, the fabric is water, and crumple proof allowing it to be easily stored in your bag with minimal packaging to combat any excess waste. The map is color coded to specific external environmental temperatures, which allows tourists, visitors and residents a like to have a new experience of Bath.

Glass Fibers Embedded In Rubber

Fri, 10 Jul 2015 00:00:00 Z

Canadian researchers are developing less expensive ways to embed glass fibers in a stretchy elastomer that could one day be used in slip-resistant winter footwear.

The material, which is made up of glass fibers embedded in a compliant rubber, could be used in the soles of slip-resistant winter boots. The researchers describe the manufacturing process in a paper in the journal Applied Physics Letters, from AIP Publishing.

The material looks like regular rubber and will stretch and deform in similar ways, said Rizvi, a postdoctoral fellow at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute who works on developing materials that can provide better traction on ice. The material also performs just as well as regular rubber on dry surfaces such as quarry tile, he added. But on ice the rubber-glass fiber composite provides significantly better traction.

Existing methods for fabricating the material require first extruding a rubber slab with glass fibers running parallel with the surface. The slab is then cut and reoriented so that the fibers stick out of the surface like the pins in a pincushion.

"The materials required for creating a high friction composite are not expensive, but the process of slicing and rearranging the rubber is not easily scalable," Rizvi said. The team has found a way to automate the process so that the material could be cheaply mass-produced.

The team noted that there is further work to be done to improve the wear-resistance of the material. Their testing has shown that the slip-resistant properties of the material fade with use so it would not be appropriate for commercial footwear until its robustness is improved.

New Honeycomb-Inspired Design Protects Against Impacts

Mon, 22 Jun 2015 00:00:00 Z

Conventional honeycomb structures are insular panels of repeating, often hexagonal-shaped cells in a range of sizes and configurations. The shortcoming of conventional honeycombs is that they lose their full protective properties after only one impact due to plastic buckling of the material. This means that after absorbing the force of one compression, they do not return to their original shape.

NS honeycombs, on the other hand, bounce back.

The researchers devised a cell geometry capable of elastic buckling, giving NS honeycomb structures the resilience to recover their energy-absorbing shape and properties after impact.

The cell dimensions can be customized to withstand different amounts of force, translating to a variety of versatile applications. The current 3.5-inch lab prototype, for example, has a force threshold level of 200 newtons -- capable of absorbing the energy of a 100 mph fastball in 0.03 seconds.

Metal Floats On Water

Tue, 19 May 2015 00:00:00 Z

A new metal composite able to float on water could allow a boat to stay afloat even after sustaining damage to its hull.

Created by a team from Deep Springs Technology (DST) and the New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering, the syntactic foam is the first example of a lightweight, metal syntactic foam—although other types of syntactic foams have been developed. The teams created the foam by reinforcing a magnesium alloy with hollow spheres of silicon carbide, resulting in material light enough to float on water yet strong enough to survive in the ocean environment.

The composite can be customized for different uses by adding more or less silicon spheres, and could applications in automobile parts, boat flooring and even vehicle armor.

Color Changing Skin

Fri, 08 May 2015 00:00:00 Z

Nature does not require dyes and pigments to create colours.

Here is another brilliant example of a new material development for camouflage colours, inspired by nature: Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley/US have created a thin, flexible material that changes colour when stretched or bent. It has potential for the future of camouflage The artificial skin was inspired by chameleons, and doesn’t involve any synthetic dyes or pigments. Physical effects can do the job.

The new material, a high-contrast metastructure (HCM), is made from silicon metastructures. It can be made to change color — on demand — by simply applying a minute amount of force. The Berkeley scientists call it “Flexible photonic metastructures for tunable coloration”.

The new material’s application is in creating adaptable camouflages that can change to adapt to various backgrounds. This new material offers exiting possibilities for an entirely new class of display technologies, color-shifting camouflage on textiles and other surface materials, and sensors that can detect otherwise imperceptible defects in buildings, bridges, and aircraft.

The material works by creating “structural colour” which is controlled by tiny scales or features on the surface of an object, which interact to reflect particular wavelights depending on their spacing. Structural colours is how butterflies create colours, how human eyes are coloured, and how chameleons control their skin tone.

Even the chameleon´s ability to create colours to their colors rapidly, has only been recently understood. Chameleons, unlike the squid and the octopus, do not modify their scaly hues by altering the pigments in their skin cells. The mysterious color-change abilities are actually attributed to a layer of special skin cells which contain light-reflecting nanocrystals.

Once again, we learn that nature does not require synthetic dyes and pigments to create colour effects, and that technology can get inspired from nature´s abilities to invent new concepts and develop innovative materials. Perhaps the future of colouration effects will be without dyes and pigments.

Next Generation Armor Inspired By Animal Scales

Thu, 19 Feb 2015 00:00:00 Z

We've seen scientists examine everything from the structure of sea sponges to the clubbing ability of mantis shrimps in the search for next generation lightweight armor systems. Researchers at Northeastern University’s College of Engineering believe that fish scales could hold the key to creating armor that's both impervious and lightweight. They eventually aim to combine the properties of fish, snake and butterfly scales into a single protective armor system.

Fish scales have been studied extensively because of their ability to protect the body while still allowing movement. However most of these studies have focused on the material of the scales and how their plasticity or elasticity alters their protective qualities. Ranajay Ghosh, an associate research scientist, and his colleagues explored a different track. They took a soft substrate and examined how adding scales of a certain size, laid out geometrically, would affect its properties.

"We found that as long as the scale material is at least an order of magnitude stiffer than the skin material, perceptible benefits can begin to accrue," Ghosh told Gizmag.

Adding 3D-printed scales to the soft substrate caused the material to stiffen up and become less penetrable. Combining geometry with scale interaction allowed the team to achieve a "structural stiffening" which is believed to be key. Simple scales used in specific arrangements that stiffen up could help to create better armor, the researchers say, given how nature seems to achieve multiple functions quite well without using the kind of high-strength materials that humans do.

"Many scales are optimized for different and often distinct purposes – protection (e.g. some fishes), mobility (snakes) or coloration (butterfly) depending on maximizing the probability of survival and replication," Ghosh tells us. "In principle, we can have a protective system which combines the protective functions of a fish scale with the mobility advantage of snake scale with the optical properties of butterfly scales."

The team aims to tweak various materials and use both 3D printing and nano-fabrication to combine these different properties into one. Challenges include fabricating and testing scales and modifying them to withstand the high energies and temperatures associated with impacts. Going forward the team hopes to gain more insights into the fundamental principles that combine geometry with scale interaction to help design better armor.

"Modern armor would be more successful if we have an easier handle on different properties from as few design variables as possible,", says Ghosh. "This reduction is possible when we discover a deeper underlying principle which makes natural dermal scale modifications so widespread and ancient."

Hydrophobic Metal Lets Water Bounce On It

Fri, 23 Jan 2015 00:00:00 Z

Scientists at the University of Rochester have created a metal that is so extremely hydrophobic that the water bounces on it as if it were repelled by a magic force field. Instead of using chemical coatings they used lasers to etch a nanostructure on the metal itself. It will not wear off, like current less effective methods.

The applications can be revolutionary: From the construction of airplane surfaces—which will avoid water freezing of the fuselage—to non-stick pans to phones to computers to TVs to cars to whatever you can imagine made of metal. They are also thinking of applying the technique to create 100-percent efficient water recollection systems in underdeveloped countries and the creation of latrines in areas where water is not abundant enough to allow for effective cleaning.

But it gets even better: The lead scientist says that 'the structures created by their laser on the metals are intrinsically part of the material surface' so they will not disappear over time, like current chemical coatings do.

Their research paper says they made the metals using a "powerful and precise laser-patterning technique that creates an intricate pattern of micro- and nanoscale structures to give the metals their new properties." According to Chunlei Guo, professor of optics at Rochester the effect is amazing:

"The material is so strongly water-repellent, the water actually gets bounced off. Then it lands on the surface again, gets bounced off again, and then it will just roll off from the surface."

Coating Coloring Technique

Wed, 24 Dec 2014 00:00:00 Z

Most people probably don't think of a coating of paint as being a particularly major component of a manufactured item. If the object is quite large, however, or if a lot of them are being made, paint can add considerably to its weight and/or production costs. With that in mind, researchers from Harvard University's Laboratory for Integrated Science and Engineering have created a new lightweight, low-cost coloring technology for both rough and smooth surfaces.

Developed by PhD student Mikhail Kats and his advisor Prof. Federico Capasso, the process involves using a machine known as an electron-beam evaporator to vaporize pieces of metal, by striking them with a stream of electrons. The vapor travels upwards through a vacuum chamber within the evaporator, and collects on the surface of a metallic item placed at the top (if the item isn't metallic, an initial base layer of vaporized metal vapor can first be applied). By repeating this process, multiple layers can be deposited on the item.

What results is an ultra-thin coating. Due to the nature in which that coating scatters reflected light, it appears to the human eye as a given color – exactly which color depends upon the metals used, and the ratios in which they're applied.

In a test of the technology, Kats coated a piece of paper with a film made up of gold and germanium. While a previous study had shown that the technique worked on smooth surfaces, this was the first time that it had been successfully applied to a rough surface.

The paper remained flexible, even after the coating was applied. Although the color appeared basically the same when viewed from different angles, the "hills and valleys" within its microstructure added some subtle variation to the light-scattering process. This caused it to have a somewhat pearlescent appearance, which could be desirable in many applications. Using a different application technique, however, the color could be made to appear completely uniform from any angle.

Although gold is an expensive metal, very little of it was required. Additionally, a number of other metals can be used, including not only germanium but also aluminum. "This is a way of coloring something with a very thin layer of material, so in principle, if it's a metal to begin with, you can just use 10 nanometers to color it, and if it's not, you can deposit a metal that's 30 nm thick and then another 10 nm," said Kats. "That's a lot thinner than a conventional paint coating that might be between a micron and 10 microns thick."

According to the university, the technology could be used to color virtually any material, including those that are rough or flexible. Additionally, because the coatings absorb a lot of light, they could find their way into optoelectronic devices such as photodetectors and solar cells.

System That Projects Materials Onto Furniture

Mon, 24 Nov 2014 00:00:00 Z

One of the frustrating elements of furniture buying is getting just the right fabric and material combination you want. Or maybe you don’t really know what you want but beige isn’t it. Typically, a salesperson or design assistant presents a giant bundle of fabric swatches usually each the size of a napkin and commences scattering them across the piece you are interested in. This is supposed to enable you to imagine how that 4″x4″ swatch of lime green will look covering an 8′ long couch. Maybe great, maybe a mistake you’ll live with for a long time.

Luxury furniture brand Ligne Roset has partnered with a tech startup Vizera Labs to devise a system to visualize numerous fabric and material options on actual pieces of furniture without stocking all the products on a showroom floor. PSFK received a demo of the system recently at a Ligne Roset showroom in NYC which aims to make customizing furniture a less risky and stressful process for customers.

Vizera Labs started by digitizing all of Ligne Roset’s upholstery and finish options individually along with 3D scans of each of their furniture pieces. An infrared sensor detects a piece of Ligne Roset furniture constructs a real time digital 3D model based on the prior scan. The fabric and material options are then mapped to this model and projected on the “furniture in white” piece. The advantage of the system is that the furniture piece can be moved or turned and the computer will regenerate a new projection to fit the new orientation.