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Replicating Hardest Known Biomaterial Could Improve Solar Cells and Batteries
cylonlover writes "Inspired by the tough teeth of a marine snail and the remarkable process by which they form, assistant professor David Kisailus at the University of California, Riverside is working toward building cheaper, more efficient nanomaterials. By achieving greater control over the low-temperature growth of nanocrystals (abstract), his research could improve the performance of solar cells and lithium-ion batteries, lead to higher-performance materials for car and airplane frames, and help develop abrasion-resistant materials that could be used for anything from specialized clothing to dental drills."
Solar cells are typically not used for mastication.
I love that somebody's pursuing this. It seems strikingly elegant to consider ways that obscure pockets of nature has already solved these same problems, and room-temperature approaches not requiring exotic metals are almost surely a good thing.
That's an awful lot of sea snails needed to even construct a compact car...
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Thompson's Teeth. The only teeth stong enough to eat other teeth!
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improve the performance of solar cells and lithium-ion batteries,
If it can keep them from catching fire, can't come soon enough for Boeing and their 787s.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Lots of sci-fi has the idea of "grown" spacecraft (references: Peter F Hamilton's Night's Dawn series, Dyson Trees, etc). Perhaps this would help us understand enough to move towards realistic spacecraft generation (build it in the environment in which it's going to operate it, and even better - have it build itself).
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It's Iron Oxide. Specifically a magnetite-based composite.
I don't understand why anyone would leave something like that out of the summary.
Yet one more thing to steal for my next D&D game.
though development will occur at a snail's pace.
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I really despise these "could lead to " claims. Usually, not a lot remains, a few years later, if anything at all. When you investigate, you invariably find one or more large egos and only rarely a large mind.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
What are these guys really doing? Are these materials even close to as good as "high performance" materials used in car and airplane frames? Are these coatings close to as hard and uniform as those used on drills? What is it about a study on millimeter scale crystallization that leads us to make these claims about macro scale properties?
Some of us in nanotechnology are scientifically comparing nanomaterials to their bulk counterparts. When we sit down and do measurements in realistic conditions, the kind of hyperbolic statements made here are a big problem. Think of it like the solid state physics version of the dot com bubble.
The work described here is good and it is important, but we shouldn't be projecting the results forward with such unfounded certainty.
I find it charming that E.E. "Doc" Smith wrote about this very subject (designing advanced materials based on the study of microcrystalline properties found in natural organisms) in his science-fiction novel "Spacehounds of IPC".
In 1931.
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So they're replicating Dragonforce?