On January 8th 2016, researchers in China announced that they had created a material that can change its shape all on its own. A team of scientists at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, says that they have developed a smart material that can be reprogrammed indefinitely to fold into complex shapes without being melted down.
The material is what is known as a shape memory polymer. Tao Xie, a materials scientist at Zhejiang University, who led the team that created the new substance, said that the material can be manipulated from either a temporary or permanent position. Most shape memory polymers work by making use of reversible chemical bonds. Tao Xie's polymer changes shape by using the long squiggly molecules that make up the material it self.
The molecules can be taught to fix or to freeze into place by physically folding them while heating them, not by rearranging them. The new material has transition temperatures of 70 degree C and 130 degrees C, for elasticity and plasticity, respectively. Current demonstrations of the shape shifting material have included going from a flat sheet to an origami bird and then to an origami boat.
Now that the technique has proven successful, Xie and his team hope to create a version that works at a lower temperature. He says that the current version of the memory shape polymer should cost the same as the plastic that people use in their everyday lives. They also feel that engineers may also one day be able to create affordable and reusable biomedical devices.
No comments:
Post a Comment