For "mechatronic-man" becomes important to know the materials:
- For aesthetics
- For the proper operation of the application: if rigid or flexible, resistant or if fragile, whether smooth or rough depending on how the product should react in the system
- The environment where it will be added to the product: if food, surgical, etc. .. because every environment has its own rules and its materials
- Energy: energy that must receive or give.
In this article we would like to introduce you to the 'functional' materials, with record properties:
- Water-responsive polymer films: a polymeric film which on contact with moisture expands and then contracts to eject it. Its uniqueness? While expands and contracts makes a cyclical movements that could be used to create energy.
- Wax-Filled Carbon Nanotube Yarn Muscles: a muscle consists of strands of carbon nanotubes coated with paraffin that, in contact with heat or light, twist. These contractions ultrafast are able to lift weights of 200 times larger than a natural muscle of equal size!
- Aerographit: it is made of carbon nanotubes with porous walls finely interwoven, has different qualities, is: super elastic, resistant to compression and conductor of electricity; but the quality that he does become a material record is lightness. It 's the lightest material in the world. To what can we use it?! Given all these features could certainly be used in various sectors, start from aerospace.
- Silicene: the new silicon for the microchip of future; its monatomic thickness allow you to build smaller devices whit better energy-efficient.
- Ultrahard nanotwinned cubic boron nitride: a cubic boron nitride which is composed of a crystal structure very small, almost a billion times thinner compounds available on the market, which has managed to steal the primacy of the hardest material at the crystal.
- Smart Materials: ... which will be discussed in a forthcoming news.
More info