[Robotgroup] Cool NASA News - Not transparent aluminum, but transparent steel?

[Ed Xavier Gonzalez]

>
>* Clay Nanosheets and Polymer Create Steel-Strength Plastic
>
>STEEL-STRENGTH PLASTIC
>University of Michigan researchers have created a composite plastic that's as
>strong as steel but lighter and transparent. The composite plastic is made of
>layers of clay nanosheets and a water-soluble, glue-like polymer. UM 
>engineering
>professor Nicholas Kotov and others have solved a problem that has confounded
>engineers and scientists for decades: individual nano-size building blocks 
>such
>as nanotubes, nanosheets, and nanorods are ultrastrong, but larger materials
>made out of bonded nano-size building blocks were comparatively weak.
>
>The UM researchers created the composite plastic with a robotic machine that
>builds materials one nanoscale layer after another. In this experiment, the
>machine's arm held a piece of glass about the size of a stick of gum on 
>which it
>built the new material. The arm dipped the glass into the glue-like polymer
>solution and then into a liquid that was a dispersion of clay nanosheets. It
>took 300 layers of each of the polymer and the nanosheets to create a piece of
>this material as thick as a piece of plastic wrap.
>
>The polymer used in the experiment, polyvinyl alcohol, was as important as the
>layer-by-layer assembly process. The structure of the "nanoglue" and the clay
>nanosheets allowed the layers to form cooperative hydrogen bonds, causing "the
>Velcro effect." If such bonds are broken, they can easily reform in a new 
>place.
>The composite plastic could be used in microelectromechanical devices,
>microfluids, biomedical sensors and valves, and unmanned aircraft.
>
>Find out more at: http://link.abpi.net/l.php?20071018A2
>
>Copyright (c) 2007 Associated Business Publications Intl.

<The right to Free Speech does not diminish the value of remaining silent>

Ed Xavier Gonzalez
Oak Hill Laser
ohlaser at swbell.net
(512) 288-5243