by Jeremy Shere
Imagine a machine small enough to flow through the blood stream and repair your body’s damaged cells. Imagine also a hydrogen-fueled battery replacing your car’s engine or an atomic computer thousands of times more potent than today’s most powerful computers.
Now stop imagining. University and industry scientists are working together to develop advanced materials—cutting-edge fabrics, metals, and polymers—that will introduce the stuff of science fiction into our very real world of nuts, bolts, gears, and wires. To further those efforts the Indiana Innovation Network (IIN), a non-profit organization dedicated to facilitating the sharing of research and information, has brought together Indiana university and industry scientists from a variety of fields to discuss some important advances shaping the ever-changing world of science and technology.Nanotechnology: The Smaller the Better Throughout the 1960s and early 70s, mechanical engineering was largely dominated by the super-sized demands of the space race. Moon launches, the Space Shuttle, exploratory satellites: all required engineering on a mammoth scale. Since the advent of the personal computer during the late 70s and early 80s, however, attention has shifted to the more diminutive end of the engineering spectrum. In an effort to increase computing power, engineers have focused intently on designing ever-smaller microchip transistors . Compare the superior memory and processing speed of a mid-range desktop PC to one built only five years ago and the rate of innovation is astonishing.
Yet according to Wolfgang Porod, a professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, transistors can only become so small. “At some point you run into fundamental limits,” says Porod, who directs Notre Dame’s Center for Nano Science and Technology. “So we’re looking beyond transistors to molecules and atoms as the future of computing.” Porod refers to nanotechnology, a catch-all phrase that essentially means machines—computers, robots, gears, and so on—built on the smallest possible scale. The special properties of molecules and subatomic particles, Porod explains, have long intrigued electrical engineers working to push beyond the current limits of computing power. Theoretically, if not yet practically, replacing transistor-based computer chips with systems using molecules and electrons will result in computers with virtually unlimited capacities for memory and processing speed.
The potential of nanotechnology is by no means limited to computers, nor is nanotech research confined to universities. Collaboration between academic and industry scientists promises to revolutionize the manufacture of many new, marketable technologies. Among various future collaborative projects, for example, Porod and his colleagues at the Notre Dame nanotech center plan to work with Zimmer, a worldwide leader in orthopedic products and prosthetics located in Warsaw, IN. Nanotechnology may prove vital for innovative orthopedic materials such as artificial bones, the surfaces of which must be engineered to allow for the easy and secure adhesion of muscles and other tissues.
Orthopedics: A Better Way to Mend Bones However much the orthopedic products industry may benefit from nanotechnology, it stands to gain just as much from other advanced materials designed on a larger scale.
Consider the following nightmare scenario. While cleaning your gutters you fall off the ladder and land hard, fracturing your femur (the main bone in the thigh). To fix the bone an orthopedic surgeon makes a 15-inch incision down your leg, removes all soft tissue from the area, and inserts a screw and bone plate. After the surgery you’re in the hospital for a week, following by nine months of painful rehab.
Scientists such as Notre Dame’s Steve Schmid, in collaboration with engineers at Zimmer, have found a better way. During the course of a five year development process they have engineered an incredibly strong, cement-like polymer—a compound substance consisting of large molecules made of many chemically bonded smaller molecules—to replace the comparatively bulky and invasive implantation of bone screw and plate. Orthopedic surgeons can now make a one inch incision through the skin without dissecting muscle tissue and inject the polymer into a prepared cavity. Inside the body the polymer hardens, holding the bone in place just as effectively as a plate. The patient is left with a much smaller scar, requires no extended hospital stay, care, or intensive rehab. A quick trip to the pharmacy for some over-the-counter pain medication and the patient is well on her way to recovery.
The successful design of the polymer, says Schmid, might not have been possible without collaboration between the university and industry. Pooling their resources and technological know how, Schmid and his colleagues and Notre Dame and Zimmer engineers including Anthony Lozier and Michael Hawkins were able to prove that the heat given off by the liquid polymer’s solidification in the body did not damage the bone—a crucial step in acquiring FDA approval.
“Getting industry and academia to work together is a very laudable goal,” says Schmid, “and people from both worlds have to be willing to do what it takes to make those relationships work.”Fuel Cells: Beyond the Gas Tank One area of advanced materials research not lacking for willing participants from academe and industry is fuel cell technology.
The excitement about fuel cells—battery-like devices that run on hydrogen—is based on their potential as a clean, long-lasting power source. Imagine pulling up to a gas station in your new, fuel cell-powered car. Instead of unleaded gasoline, you fill your fuel cell tank with pure hydrogen or methanol. As you drive away, the fuel cell’s platinum catalyst strips away the methanol’s hydrogen to use as a power source and expels the by-product—carbon dioxide (CO2)—through the tailpipe. Instead of your car belching forth black plumes of exhaust, the invisible CO2 dissipates into the ether. Plus, the fuel cell will power your car for much longer than an ordinary gas guzzling engine.
This may sound too good to be true, and for the time being it is. Fuel cell technology is a long way from making possible the manufacture of affordable fuel cell-run cars. As Notre Dame professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering Paul McGinn explains, the greatest challenge to the advancement of fuel cell technology is access to hydrogen. “It sounds nice and clean and environmentally friendly to say that fuel cells can run on pure hydrogen, but then you have to ask: where do we get the hydrogen from,” says McGinn. Hydrogen can be extracted from coal, natural gas, and even water. But the burning of fossil fuels necessary to process coal and derive hydrogen from water (H2O) often undermines fuel cells’ potential as a clean power source.
This is not to say that fuel cells are therefore unfeasible or that more efficient methods of obtaining hydrogen will not materialize. Within the next few years, according to McGinn, small-scale fuel cell batteries will begin appearing in portable electronic devices such as high end laptop computers. Squirt a bit of alcohol or methanol into your laptop battery and you’re powered up for 24 hours.
At present, however, the high cost of fuel cells is prohibitive for larger appliances. You can buy a 4 kilowatt gasoline-powered generator at K-Mart for around $500. A 1 kilowatt fuel-cell powered generator would run you around $7000. Transfer that cost to a car or any other large-scale product and the price soars far beyond the means of the average consumer. The exorbitant cost is due in large part to the amount of platinum necessary to catalyze chemical reactions in fuel cells. McGinn and his colleagues at Notre Dame are working to reduce the amount of platinum necessary in fuel cells and, more ambitiously, to develop a less-expensive alternative to platinum that will help fuel cell manufacturers overcome a significant economic hurdle.
They’re not here quite yet, but fuel cells are coming. “We’re at a point where there’s enough incentive that these things will actually happen,” says McGinn, who credits organizations like the IIN for helping to spur the collaborative university and industry work necessary to make fuel cells an everyday part of our modern reality.Carbon Carbon Composites: Stronger Fibers for Planes, Trains, and Fast Cars Whether nanotech-related, used as an orthopedic insert, or connected to fuel cells, advanced materials of all types have one thing in common: chemistry. Such innovative materials owe their existence to the ability of academic and industry scientists and engineers to combine the elements of the periodic table in new and unexpected ways.
Take carbon, for example. The inherently strong and heat resistant atomic structure of carbon makes it useful as a base element for materials that must be able to function under extremely high temperatures. Carbon is often combined with other materials to create strong, heat-resistant composites used, for example, as breaks in airplanes, trains, race cars, and other large, fast-moving vehicles.
The problem with carbon composites is that when temperatures reach extreme levels, polymers used to hold the composite together begin to break down. Breaks used in large aircraft, for example, wear out quickly and require frequent replacement. Working with engineers at the Honeywell corporation in South Bend, Purdue University professor of mechanical engineering Thomas Sigmund has developed carbon carbon composites—an advanced material that embeds carbon fibers within a carbon matrix. This all-carbon material is not only able to withstand higher temperatures than existing carbon composite fibers but is also lighter.
Such innovative composites represent a significant advance for Honeywell’s aircraft brake industry. When an airplane lands, its breaks work to stop the plane by transferring plane’s kinetic energy to heat. Carbon carbon composite-based breaks are not only able to withstand the high temperatures without breaking down but weigh up to 1/3 less than steel breaks. Given the high costs of fueling large airplanes, breaks that are lighter without sacrificing durability are indeed a major step forward.
The Indiana Innovation Network: Bridging the University-Industry Gap
As Professor Schmid notes, academia and industry do not always see eye to eye. Coming from very different cultures, university and corporation scientists often approach research with different and sometimes conflicting goals. The two worlds need not be diametrically opposed, however. And when they join forces, the results can be impressive. “Lots of companies don’t have the time or personnel to monitor new developments in the academy,” Paul McGinn explains. “The IIN provides a mechanism to present university research to companies in a manner that foregrounds its importance and usefulness.” As Professor Siegmund puts it, “it’s a good thing to know what we [universities] can do for them [industry], and what they can do for us. If the IIN can do that, the better it is for everyone.”
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