This 2-D nanosheet expands like a Grow Monster

Light causes crystal lattice to swell, opening new possibilities for artificial muscles, tiny electronics. Credit: Richard Remsing, Ph.D., Temple University

Grow Monsters. Expandable water toys. Whatever you call them, they're plastic-like figurines that swell when placed in water.

New materials science research borrows from this concept; only instead of water, engineers discovered that tiny crystal lattices called “self-assembling molecular nanosheets” expand when exposed to light.

The advancement, described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in March, could form the backbone of new light-powered actuators, oscillators and other microscopic electronic components useful in the development of artificial muscles and other soft robotic systems.

The work centers on a materials science concept known as photostriction, which means turning light directly into mechanical motion, says the study's co-lead author Shenqiang Ren, a researcher at the University at Buffalo's RENEW Institute, which works to solve complex environmental problems.

“We're using light — anything from sunlight to a simple laser — to cause the two-dimensional nanosheet to expand at an incredibly fast rate,” he says.

How fast? Sub-milliseconds. The process is aided by the photostrictive effect, which essentially bypasses the need to create electricity to move something, says Ren, PhD, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

The nanosheet — made of the molecular charge-transfer compound DBTTF and buckyball molecules) — can expand up to 5.7 percent of its original size, according to the study.

While that may not sound like much, consider this: a 200-pound man that expands 5.7 percent would need to add 11.4 pounds in less than a second to keep pace with the light-triggered nanosheet.

Expandable water toys grow much more than that, but they do not revert to their original size. By contrast, the nanosheet does, making it potentially very useful as a light-induced actuator in artificial muscles, which has applications in everything from medical devices to industrial robotics.

###

The study, which includes contributions from researchers at Temple University and Nanjing University of Science and Technology in China, was supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Media Contact

Cory Nealon
cmnealon@buffalo.edu
716-645-4614

 @UBNewsSource

http://www.buffalo.edu 

Media Contact

Cory Nealon EurekAlert!

All latest news from the category: Materials Sciences

Materials management deals with the research, development, manufacturing and processing of raw and industrial materials. Key aspects here are biological and medical issues, which play an increasingly important role in this field.

innovations-report offers in-depth articles related to the development and application of materials and the structure and properties of new materials.

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

New yttrium-hydrogen compounds discovered

Researchers at the University of Bayreuth have made a significant scientific breakthrough by discovering new yttrium-hydrogen compounds having serious implications for the research on high-pressure superconductivity. High-pressure superconductivity refers to…

New AI model detects ninety percent of lymphatic cancer cases

Medical image analysis using AI has developed rapidly in recent years. Now, one of the largest studies to date has been carried out using AI-assisted image analysis of lymphoma, cancer…

UTA preps giant particle detectors for neutrino project

Excavation of caverns part of Fermilab’s Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. With excavation work complete at the site where four gigantic particle detectors for the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) will be…

Partners & Sponsors