Nano-Enabled Smart Materials
5 February 2008, 14:40
Categories: smart-materials-smt
Smart materials are engineered to have properties that change in a controlled manner under the influence of external stimuli such as mechanical stress, temperature, humidity, electric charge, magnetic fields, etc. Nature of course is full with smart materials that are capable of adapting to new tasks, are self-healing, and can self-assemble autonomously simply out of a solution of building blocks. Duplicating this feat with man-made materials will one day become a reality thanks to nanotechnology. Scientists not only dream about self-repairing cars or building walls that turn transparent like windows, they are actively working on the first steps towards these goals.
Simple smart materials are already a reality, such as piezoelectric materials and shape memory alloys. Emerging nanotechnologies are now about to give scientists the tools to take smart materials to the next performance level. For instance, the European project Inteltex is developing a new, multifunctional textile that could be used to detect temperature changes or chemical leakage, or that could be used in medical and protective wear to monitor body temperature and mechanical stress. MIT’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies is working on smart surfaces that switch properties.
Nanotechnology-enabled smart materials are still very early days but basic progress is being made. Another small building block towards luminescent smart materials was recently reported by Italian researchers at the National Nanotechnology Laboratory at the Universita’ degli Studi di Lecce, who demonstrated photo-switchable nanofibers based on the reversible transformation between two molecular photochemical states, exhibiting different chemico-physical characteristics.
Posted by: The Editors
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