June/July 2009

Material

Did you know that a new tissue scaffold can stimulate bone and cartilage growth when transplanted into knees? Or that an electrospun nanofiber may be the new metal armor? This issue of Quick Take explores cutting-edge materials that could impact the future and looks at building techniques, implications of material wealth, and some fun slogans found on breezy cotton T-shirts, perfect for summer wear.

Building blocks

In the connected sustainable home being designed by the MIT Mobile Experience Lab, the sizes and shapes of window apertures are electronically controlled. Variation can be manipulated manually or respond automatically to sensor input and implement energy-saving strategies.

Sustainable home designers seek to respond to inhabitants' needs
The MIT Mobile Experience Lab, through an alliance with the Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Trento, Italy, is working to build a full-scale prototype of a connected sustainable home with new technologies, materials, and applications. Earlier this year, the team showed a demo of the structure's dynamic windows (above), whose transparency can be adjusted by occupants or respond to movement.

Steel-bridge team takes design talents to nationals
The team took first place at the regional competition to win a trip to nationals in Las Vegas May 22-23, where they placed 18th out of 47. Teams are judged on aesthetics, construction speed, lightness, stiffness, construction cost, and structural efficiency (a combination of weight and stiffness). Each bridge is tested with a 2,500-pound load. Read the team's blog and view a slide show.

Imagining a 21st-century White House
Proposals from the School of Architecture and Planning appear in a book documenting the results of a contest to redesign the President's home. SA+P ideas include transforming it into a museum/theme park of American politics that emphasizes the tourist attraction and media spectacle aspects of the house.

Grad student architect named to 100 most creative people list
Neri Oxman, who's working on a PhD in design and computation, formed the interdisciplinary research initiative materialecology to research the intersection of architecture, engineering, computation, and ecology. She recently won the first Earth Awards for creating a new rapid manufacturing process called FAB.REcology. Watch a video explaining her award-winning process. This month, Fast Company magazine named her to its inaugural list of the 100 Most Creative People in Business.

Ancient balsa-wood raft sails the Charles
The raft was a faithful reproduction of those used in the pre-Columbian Pacific trade to carry goods between the great civilizations of the Andes and Mesoamerica a millennium ago. Students used eight balsa logs brought from Ecuador and completed the project as part of an Ancient Material class.

OpenCourseWare: Techniques for Structural Analysis and Design
An aeronautics and astronautics course that introduces analysis techniques for complex structures and the role of material properties in structural design, failure, and longevity.

Nanomaterials

Gold nanorods fight tumor cells
Newly developed gold nanorods can zero in on tumors, absorb energy from near-infrared light, and emit it as heat, thus creating a way to destroy tumor cells that is significantly safer than conventional heat-based models, which have a tendency to damage nearby tissues.

Electrospun nanofiber is the new metal armor
A tissue-like nanofiber material, produced by a technique called electrospinning and composed of fibers 1000 times thinner than a human hair, may be used in protective clothing and wearable power, MIT researchers say.

Polymer backpacks could ferry drugs and nanoparticles
MIT researchers developed and loaded tiny polymer "backpacks" with chemotherapy agents for targeting tumor cells and magnetic nanoparticles for enabling magnetic control with hopes that the backpacks could be fixed to cells that would then ferry materials to tumors, infections, or other tissue sites.

Nanowire mesh absorbs pollutants
A nanowire mesh made of potassium manganese oxide feels like paper but can absorb up to 20 times its weight in oil. The MIT researchers who created it expect it to aid future environmental work, such as oil-spill cleanup and water purification. Watch a demo.

Self-assembling peptides stop bleeding in seconds
MIT and Hong Kong researchers created a biodegradable liquid composed of peptides that self-assembles into a nanoscale barrier gel that can seal wounds and stop bleeding.

Flexible tablet-sized display from LG.Philips LCD and E Ink Corporation. Photo: courtesy LG.Philips LCD.

Novel Materials

A few years ago, New Scientist bloggers compiled a list of materials that "behave a little bit outside the norm." Here's a comparable MIT-inspired list.

Electronic ink: Revolutionizes displays on Kindles, watches
Imagine wirelessly downloading and perusing the Sunday edition of the New York Times (videos and all) on a flexible screen the size of typing paper. An MIT Media Lab spinoff called E Ink has done just that, creating a proprietary electronic ink material that has been integrated into different displays, including Amazon Kindles and Phosphor watches.

Polymer electrolyte thin film: Improves fuel cell efficiency
Researchers in MIT Professor Paula Hammond's lab created polymer electrolyte thin films that improve the power output of one type of fuel cell by more than 50 percent.

Graphene: Could succeed silicon
Eight MIT researchers recently received a major Defense Department grant to study graphene, a new form of carbon that is one atom thick and could, among other things, succeed silicon in a new generation of microchips.

Tissue scaffold: Regrows cartilage and bone
MIT Professor Lorna Gibson and colleagues developed a new tissue scaffold material that can promote bone and cartilage growth when transplanted into the knees and other joints.

flouroPOSS: Repels oil
MIT engineers have designed a group of oil-repelling materials that could be utilized in aviation, space travel, and hazardous waste cleanup. Watch a video that shows fluoroPOSS in action.

Copyright©2009 Massachusetts Institute of Technology