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

[Kevin Blanchard]

I don't know. I kind of like the ring of "Transparisteel" ;-)

On Thu, October 25, 2007 9:55 am, LHudson wrote:
> Hey, has anyone read Kevin J. Anderson's Jedi Academy series?  It's
> considered a must-read if you're a SW fan but mostly it's full of dialog
> and syntax that stinks worse than Episode II.
>
>   Anyway, my point is that throughout the novels you will encounter one of
> the most spine-curdlingly irritating words ever made up and that word is
> "Transparisteel".  And now some Michigan dork has gone and invented it.
>
> Ed Xavier Gonzalez <ohlaser at swbell.net> wrote:
>
>>
>>* 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.
>
>
>
> Ed Xavier Gonzalez
> Oak Hill Laser
> ohlaser at swbell.net
> (512) 288-5243
>
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>
>
> L. Scott Hudson
>
>   If I were certain that the World would end tomorrow, I would plant a
> tree...
>
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