As the week of the MRS Fall Meeting and Exhibit 2015 in Boston, MA comes to a close, AZoM takes a look at the most exciting materials innovations covered across the symposia held over the course of the conference.
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Gelatin sheets / jreika / Shutterstock
Gelatin Yarn
Taking inspiration from biopolymers made from waste proteins, P.R. Stoessel spoke about fabricating yarn from gelatin. As an animal by-product, gelatin from collagen is available in huge quantities, making the up-scaling of this process to an industrial scale a real possibility.
A key concern for this project was that gelatin is water-soluble, but a process has been developed to ensure that the fibers maintain their structure after swelling.
With high elastic modulus and thermal conductivity, the yarn has properties similar to merino wool, and though part of the presentation included a gloved knitted from the gelatin yarn, thanks to the biocompatible nature of collagen, promising applications are likely to be found in the medical field. Audience contributions included wound sealing, with suggestions made that the solubility of the fiber could be controlled, making it an ideal soluble fiber for this use.
Strong and Lightweight Nanolattices
At the MRS Bulletin Special Edition Session, Julia Greer’s presentation focused on nanolattices as a solution to an increasing need for strong but lightweight materials. Julia explained how vital the ratio between wall thickness and diameter is to the strength of these materials, with thinner walls producing stronger materials.
Julia showed SEM images of the nanolattices under compression, demonstrating how the samples could recover even after over 50% compression with walls 10 nm thick, whilst walls of 60 nm caused the sample to collapse at this compression.
Julia sees applications in anodes and cathodes, where lithium ions flowing through a material cause it to expand – these structures could take on expansions without risk of cracking or deforming.
Another possible application would be in photonics – the nanolattices could be used as 3D photonics crystals, which are sensitive to strain, even changing colour dependent on strain levels. At present, this change is in the infrared range, but there is promise that this will be moved into the visible spectrum with further development.
Nanomaterials - Professor Julia Greer - 2015 / Caltech / Youtube
Transient Materials for Vanishing Electronics
At a lunchtime lecture, Professor Christopher Ober spoke about fabricating at molecular dimensions fifty years on from Moore’s Law. The highlight on a materials level was Ober’s section on how chemical amplification could be used in transient materials for use in lithography. One suggested application was fabricating sensors that could detect the environmental impact of a spill, before being set to dissolve rather than collecting them.
Ober believes that vanishing electronics will become an increasingly important area of materials science.
He explained that a valve in a polymer device will be released, leaving rubidium open to the atmosphere. As this element is highly reactive, it will react with the air, creating a huge amount of heat and dissolving the material rapidly.
The Future of These Materials
Keep an eye on AZoM over the coming weeks, where we will be interviewing some of the Thought Leaders who spoke at MRS Fall 2015.
The next MRS meeting and exhibit will be held in Phoenix, Arizona in March 2016.