Crystals that change shape. Free Technical Library News

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Crystals that change shape

20.09.2020

The crystals, created by an international team of researchers led by Xi Chen at the City College of New York and his co-authors at the Center for Advanced Science in Crystals, can transfer energy from evaporation into mechanical motion. Thus, evaporation can be a source of energy for actuators, artificial muscles, and many applications.

Unlike traditional crystals, which are usually hard and brittle, new crystals have the ability to change their shape due to their molecular architecture. Crystals are composed of a pattern of small pores punctuated by connecting flexible domains that repeat throughout the crystal structure. The pores passing through the crystals are strongly associated with water molecules.

"When evaporation causes water to be removed from the pores, it causes the entire crystal to be severely deformed through the network junction. The resulting shape change is reversed when water vapor is reintroduced," said Chen, study author and assistant professor of chemical engineering at the CCNY Grove School of Engineering. "Our peptide crystals enable direct observation of water-material interactions at the molecular level using existing crystallographic, spectroscopic and computational techniques. The trigger mechanisms identified are applicable more generally to material designs or structures that make efficient use of evaporation."

The materials that control this movement react to water or humidity. These materials, which swell and contract in response to changes in humidity, can directly and efficiently convert evaporative energy into mechanical motion. This new area opens up opportunities to access untapped water evaporation as an energy source, as well as to develop better actuators and artificial muscles for modern engineered systems.

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