Recently Yahoo News on-line reported the following:
MIT researchers create new material as strong as steel
and light as plastic
Michelle Shen, USA TODAY
Sun, February 6, 2022, 4:35 PM
MIT researchers have developed a new
material that's as strong as steel but as light as plastic.
It can be easily
manufactured in large quantities, and the use cases range from lightweight
coatings for cars and phones to building blocks for massive structures such as
bridges, according to Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical
Engineering at MIT and the senior author of a new study.
“We don’t usually think of plastics as being something that you could use to support a building, but with this material, you can enable new things,” he said in a statement from MIT. “It has very unusual properties and we’re very excited about that.”
The material is several times stronger than bulletproof glass, and the amount of force needed to break it is twice that of steel, despite the fact that the material has only about one-sixth the density of steel, according to MIT.
The researchers were able to do this by developing a new process to form polymers. Plastics are an example of polymers, along with rubber and glass.
The researchers wanted to see whether they could create a two-dimensional version of a polymer that could remain flat, thus making it lightweight. They tried for decades to create such a material, and the new process they developed was published in peer-reviewed journal Nature last week.
Polymers are essentially chains of individual molecules, called monomers, linked together by chemical bonds. Normally, when polymers are formed, they expand into three-dimensional objects, like how a sheet cake rises as it bakes in an oven. The challenge is if even one monomer begins to rotate, the polymer becomes three-dimensional.
For example, imagine if you wanted to line up children and pack a bunch of them in an auditorium by having them link arms. However, if even one of the children choose to be unruly and shift around, it would be impossible to maintain order.
The key came from building a process that could allow the monomers to link up and grow into a polymer chain without causing any one of the monomers to stray. If you could build several two-dimensional polymers, you could layer them like disks and stack a bunch of them together in a tight space, similar to how you could pack lines of children into an auditorium, if they're well-behaved.
(This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: MIT researchers create material as strong as steel, light as plastic)
Translation
麻省理工學院的研究人員已經開發出一種新材料，它的強度與鋼一樣，但與塑料一樣輕。
據麻省理工學院 Carbon P. Dubbs 化學工程科教授邁克爾·斯特拉諾 (Michael Strano) , 他亦是這一項新研究的作者說，新材料可以很容易地大批量生產，其用例範圍從汽車和手機的輕質塗料到橋樑等大型結構的砌塊。
他在麻省理工學院的一份聲明中說： “我們通常不認為塑料可以用來支撐建築物，但使用這種材料，你可以創造新事物”; “它具有非常不尋常的特性，我們對此感到非常興奮” 。
據麻省理工學院稱，這種材料的強度是防彈玻璃的幾倍，打破它所需的力量是鋼的兩倍，儘管這種材料的密度只有鋼的六分之一左右。
研究人員能夠做到這一點是透過開發一種造成聚合物的新工藝來達成。塑料是聚合物的一個例子，還有橡膠和玻璃。
研究人員想看看他們是否可以製造出一種二維版本的聚合物，這種聚合物可以保持平坦，從而使其輕量化。他們幾十年來一直試圖創造這樣一種材料，他們開發的新工序上週發表在同行評議的《自然》雜誌上。
聚合物本質上是單個分子鏈，稱為單體，通過化學鍵連接在一起。通常情況下，當聚合物形成時，它們會膨脹成三維物體，就像蛋糕在烤箱中烘烤時如何上升一樣。挑戰在於，即使一個單體開始旋轉，聚合物也會變成三維的。
例如，想像一下，如果你想讓孩子們排成一排，然後讓他們手挽手，把他們塞進一個禮堂。但是當即使是其中一個孩子選擇不守規矩，四處走動，就無法維持秩序。
關鍵在於建立一種工序，該工序可以讓單體連接起來並長成聚合物鏈，而不會導致任何單體偏離。如果您可以構建幾個二維聚合物，您可以將它們像磁盤一樣分層，並將它們堆疊在一起在一個狹窄的空間中，類似於您可以將一排排孩子塞進禮堂，如果他們守秩序的話。
So, a new construction
material has been discovered. Will it revolutionize the process in making
material?
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