A gel with akin properties to shatterproof solid could person applications successful brushed robots and prosthetics
Physics 25 November 2021By Carissa Wong
A caller gel rapidly returns to its archetypal signifier aft being severely squashed Zehuan Huang, University of Cambridge
A brushed gel made of 80 per cent h2o has akin properties to shatterproof solid and tin withstand being tally implicit by a car 16 times without lasting deformation. The worldly could beryllium utile for a scope of applications including brushed robots, prosthetics and wearable devices.
Hydrated polymer networks, oregon hydrogels, that person been made earlier are brushed and stretchable, with rubber-like properties. But nether precocious compression, these gels neglect to bounce backmost to their archetypal shape.
Now Oren Scherman and his colleagues astatine the University of Cambridge person created a brushed and compression-resistant gel that tin rapidly instrumentality to its archetypal signifier wrong a mates of minutes, adjacent aft being repeatedly squished by a car weighing 1200 kilograms.
“This enactment breaks done the boundaries of what was deemed possible,” says Richard Hoogenboom astatine Ghent University successful Belgium, who wasn’t progressive successful the study. Polymer networks are usually either beardown oregon deformable, portion this gel combines some properties to marque deformable, beardown and pugnacious glass-like materials, helium says.
The gel contains a polymer made of 2 types of “guest” molecules – a perfluorophenyl and a phenyl – that beryllium wrong barrel-shaped “host” molecules called cucurbiturils. The impermanent molecules are cross-linked to each different wrong the hosts, forming a lattice network.
As the transverse links are formed done attraction betwixt other charges, they perpetually unbind and reform. Scherman and his colleagues suspected that making the transverse links past longer earlier dissociating could summation the absorption of the hydrogel to compression.
To trial this idea, the researchers modified the operation of the phenyl impermanent molecules successful the web to marque them much water-repellent, which accrued the clip earlier transverse links fell apart. They produced a scope of gels, from rubber-like to glass-like.
“This caller people of materials holds important committedness successful a wide scope of applications including cartilage replacement, physics skins, prosthetic limbs, wearable devices arsenic good arsenic brushed robotics,” says Scherman.
Journal reference: Nature Materials, DOI: 10.1038/s41563-021-01124-x
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