High fidelity coupling of digital bits and physical atoms at MIT Media Lab

20 Dec, 2020

High fidelity coupling of digital bits and physical atoms at MIT Media Lab

Created in the Tangible Media group at the MIT Media Lab, DefeXtiles is an attempt at high fidelity coupling of digital bits and physical atoms.

Created in the Tangible Media group at the MIT Media Lab, DefeXtiles is an attempt at high fidelity coupling of digital bits and physical atoms. While defects are often seen as negative, this works leverages the periodic gap defects that arise from the underextrusion of thermoplastic to produce flexible and thin substrates.

These soft and stretchable substrates can be quickly printed into complex 3D forms with many materials using an unmodified inexpensive 3D printer. We are able to print full-sized garments, e-textiles, durable shuttlecocks, and miniature dresses among others.

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A self-healing, water-repellant coating that's ultra durable

This coating developed at the University of Michigan is hundreds of times more durable than its counterparts and could enable waterproofing of vehicles, clothing, rooftops and countless other surfaces.

Gabe Cherry

fromUniversity of Michigan

01 Oct, 2017

materials

These are tests showing the durability of the repellent coating under just two of various conditions that it can weather.

A self-healing, water-repellent spray-on coating developed at the University of Michigan is hundreds of times more durable than its counterparts and could enable waterproofing of vehicles, clothing, rooftops and countless other surfaces for which current waterproofing treatments are too fragile. It could also lower the resistance of ship hulls, reducing the fuel consumption of the massive ships that transport ninety percent of the world’s cargo.

The developers say the new concoction is a major breakthrough in a field where decades of research have failed to produce a durable coating. While water-repellent coatings are available at present, they tend to be far too fragile for applications like clothing or ship hulls. This discovery changes that.

“Thousands of superhydrophobic surfaces have been looked at over the past twenty or thirty years, but nobody has been able to figure out how to systematically design one that’s durable,” explains Anish Tuteja, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at U-M. “I think that’s what we’ve really accomplished here, and it’s going to open the door for other researchers to create cheaper, perhaps even better superhydrophobic coatings.”

The coating is made of a mix of a material called “fluorinated polyurethane elastomer” and a specialized water-repellent molecule known as “F-POSS.” It can be easily sprayed onto virtually any surface and has a slightly rubbery texture that makes it more resilient than its predecessors.

How do you test your research? Try to break it. #SuperhydrophobicCoating

If it is damaged, the coating can heal itself hundreds of times. It can bounce back “even after being abraded, scratched, burned, plasma-cleaned, flattened, sonicated and chemically attacked,” the researchers

Image: Terry Shyu, MSE PhD Student and Graduate Research Assistant, demonstrates a stretchable conductor's ability to conduct. Photo: Joseph Xu

Kirigami art could enable stretchable plasma screens

The art of paper cutting may slice through a roadblock on the way to flexible, stretchable electronics, a team of engineers and an artist at the University of Michigan has found.

Kate McAlpine

fromUniversity of Michigan

15 Oct, 2015

materials

The art of paper cutting may slice through a roadblock on the way to flexible, stretchable electronics, a team of engineers and an artist at the University of Michigan has found.

In the future, a little bend in your smartphone might be considered a feature rather than a defect. An important component of future electronics that can be rolled up, folded or embedded in flexible objects is the stretchable conductor, which would make up components like wires and electrodes.

Conductors that stretch are difficult to design, and among those that are known, they either don’t expand by much or the conductivity takes a nosedive when they do. By developing a conductor inspired by kirigami, the Japanese art of paper cutting, conductivity is sacrificed up front. The cuts become barriers to electrical conductivity, but when stretched, the conductors are steady performers.

“The kirigami method allows us to design the deformability of the conductive sheets, whereas before it was very Edisonian process with a lot of misses and not a lot of hits,” said Nicholas Kotov, the Joseph B. and Florence V. Cejka Professor of Engineering, referring to Thomas Edison’s trial-and-error approach to invention.

Matt Shlian, Artist and Adjunct Lecturer in the School of Art & Design, shows one of the original paper models that served for inspiration for a stretchable conductor made out of mesh structure of carbon nanotubes. Photo: Joseph Xu

This is because when materials are stretched to the max, it’s difficult to predict when and where rips will occur. However, if the tears are designed in a thoughtful way, the material’s ability to stretch and recover becomes reliable.

It sounds simple, but until art and engineering came together with this project, no one had reported using kirigami to tackle the challenge of stretchable conductors. The results are presented in the latest edition of Nature Materials.

Matt Shlian, artist and lect