The future of materials looks to have taken a drastic turn. Technological advancement has led the innovation of new materials. Scientists are working extra hard to come up with new materials. These materials are to come up with new products in various manufacturing sectors.
These materials are not for the manufacturing sector alone but also in other areas like medical sector and many others. The following are the most amazing materials for the future.
Materials for the Future
- Carbon Nanotubes
- Amorphous Metal
- Aluminum Bubble Wrap
- Molecular Superglue
- Artificial Spider Silk
- Bacilla Filla
- Graphene Aerogel
- Titanium Foam
These materials have a more significant capability to take over the future of similar materials in future.
Aerogel is one of the materials for the future. Aerogel holds fifteen entries in the Guinness Book of Record for its material properties. Currently, aerogel is the world’s least dense solid. ‘Frozen Smoke’ is the other name of Aerogel. Supercritical drying of liquid gels of chromium, tin oxide, alumina, or carbon makes it.
Having a 99.8% space, it is semi-transparent. Aerogel is a fantastic insulator, and you can defend yourself from a fire thrower and prevents cold and at the same time heat. Using aerogel, you can build a warm dome on the moon this is according to scientists.
Aerogel has unbelievable surface area and internal structure of cubes. With just an inch aerogel, the surface area may be equal to a football field. The main application is as an insulating and thickening product in:
- Cosmetic products
- In space suits
- Military armor
For a fact, NASA has used Aerogel to trap space dust.
A metamaterial is a group of artificial essential elements designed to attain beneficial and rare electromagnetic properties. Metamaterials talk about to any materials that increase its properties from arrangement rather than composition. Creation of microwaves and visibility cloaks is by use of Metamaterials.
Mother-of-pearl gets its rainbow color from Metamaterials of biological origin. Some metamaterials have a negative refractive index an optical property that may be essential in the creation of superlenses. These results in features smaller than the wavelength of light used to image them; ‘Sub Wavelength Imaging’ is the name of this technology.
For the future metamaterials, applications will include ray optics; this will render a perfect hologram on a two-dimensional display. These holograms will be complete, and if you are standing six inches from the screen, you will not notice it is a hologram.
Apart from its applications such as visibility cloaks, optical lenses, and microwaves, metamaterials can also manufacture the following products:
- Radar Cross Section reducing metamaterials
- Sound filtering
Due to its broad application, metamaterials are one of the best materials for the future.
Carbon nanotubes are long chains of carbon by the most durable bond, Carbon SP2 consider as one of the most reliable carbon bonds. CNTs are allotropes of carbon. These carbon molecules have unusual properties that make them potentially useful in many applications in:
- Architectural fields
- Other fields of Material Science
They display extraordinary strength and unique electrical properties. Carbon nanotubes are valuable conductors of heat. Carbon nanotubes have numerous physical properties including ballistic electron transport, which makes them ideal for electronics. They have so much tensile strength hence the only substance able to build space elevators like the one Google is building.
Also, carbon nanotubes can build a pipe that transports people and materials. In future, they can carry humans to the moon. Carbon nanotubes have a specific strength of 48,000 KiloNewtons per kilogram.
It consists of metals with a disordered atomic structure. The amorphous alloy can be as twice strong as steel. Due to their disordered structure, they disperse impact energy more efficiently more than a metal crystal.
Manufacturing of amorphous metal is by quickly cooling molten metal before it can align itself with a crystal pattern. Considered as the next generation of military armor. They have electronic properties that can increase the effectiveness of power grids by forty percent saving thousands of tons of fuel emissions.
Molecular Super Glue
Have you ever stuck your fingers together with super glue, I think you know the pain. Molecular super glue bonds molecular materials.
A team of researchers from Oxford University has created a molecular superglue inspired by streptococcus a flesh-eating bacteria. These form a covalent bond when it encounters a partner protein.
During research of the supermolecular glue by scientist, the testing equipment broke before the glue. This future material may have some applications.
According to the scientist, it is the most durable material currently. Graphene is two hundred times stronger than steel. It is a single layer of pure carbons arranged in a hexagonal lattice pattern. Graphene is so thin hence considered as a two-dimensional object.
Graphene has terrific electrical and thermal properties. For Graphene, it is very ductile but at the same time is very strong. Some of the applications are:
- For high capacity batteries
- Flat screen televisions
- Small computer chips
Manufacture of Graphene is by taking a special adhesive tape to collect residue from graphite.
Artificial Spider Silk
It is challenging for spider silk manufacturing companies to produce it in bulk. A Japanese startup company ‘Spiber’ has been working on how to generate artificial spider silk synthetically. Spiber has been able to decode the gene responsible for the production of fibroin in the spider with the vital protein used to create the super strong strength of silk.
Spiber has manufactured bio-engineered bacteria from E. coli that can make the silk tremendously fast. The company can now produce a new type of silk from scratch to a finished product in just ten days.
In a discovery, a single gram of fibroin can produce 56 miles of spider silk. Hence improve the production of textile for the future.
Graphene Aerogel is the universes less dense material for the future. It has a density lesser than that of helium and doubles that of hydrogen. Also well known as ‘aerographene’ it is relatively flexible and can merely maintain their original shape after some compression.
Due to its low density it Graphene Aerogel floats on air. Also, these make those excellent absorbent materials hence could be useful in massive mop-up of oil spills with ease. Graphene aerogel has other uses such as energy transmission and storage by the manufacture of lighter, advanced- energy-density batteries.
These exotic materials for the future some are still under research while others are readily functioning. For a better and safer future, these materials are very essential.