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3D printing has become a much more versatile possibility thanks to the work of a team of researchers who claim to have invented the most elastic, 3D printable polymer in the world. The work is a result of a collaboration between researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI), and two teams from Singapore. One from the Singapore University of Technology and Design’s Digital Manufacturing and Design Centre (DManD), and another from the Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE).

Publishing their results in the Journal of Advanced Materials, the research teams explain how their stretchable UV curable (SUV) elastomers can be, “stretched by up to 1100% and are suitable for digital light processing (DLP) based 3D printing technology. DLP printing of these SUV elastomers enables the direct creation of highly deformable complex 3D hollow structures such as balloons, soft actuators, grippers, and Bucky ball electronical switches.”

Elastomers are a valuable part of the polymer industry, with polymer manufacturers using their elastic properties for a wide range of applications. For example, they are used in the making of biomedical devices, as well as soft robotics, and are an invaluable addition to flexible electronics. However, uptil now their use has been restricted by their need for thermal curing. While silicon rubber-based materials , which are the most common form of elastomer, typically need traditional manufacturing via molding, cutting, and casting, which keeps costs high.

While the development of a highly elastic elastomer may not surprise many, polymer traders are seeing the new material as a possible game changer. As the plastics industry journal 3D Printer and 3D Printing News reports, “At this point, you may be telling yourself that you’re familiar with 3D printable elastomer materials, and that they do already exist. And while this is true—there are elastomer materials that are commercially available for UV light 3D printing—those on the market cannot stretch beyond 200% once they’ve been cured, a restriction that makes them much less useful for many professional applications.”

It also seems that the new polymer is durable enough to last sufficiently long in most practical situations. As 3D Printer and 3D Printing News explains, “The SUV elastomers have also reportedly shown good mechanical repeatability, making them suitable for use in flexible electronics. This feature was demonstrated by the researchers, who 3D printed a buckyball light switch using the elastomer, and pressed it 1000 times. After the testing, the light switch still worked normally.”

Co-leader of the research project, Professor Shlomo Magdassi, sumarised the discovery’s versatility and practical use, when he said, “Overall, we believe the SUV elastomers, together with the UV curing based 3D printing techniques, will significantly enhance the capability of fabricating soft and deformable 3D structures and devices including soft actuators and robots, flexible electronics, acoustic metamaterials, and many other applications.”

With the discovery of a much more elastic, printable polymer, surely it is only a matter of time before plastic manufacturers begin to design products that take advantage of the greater versatility of 3D printing. Added to this versatility is the fact that the new elastomer may allow for lower production costs. A point made clear, by another of the study’s co-leaders, Assistant Professor Qi Ge, when he said, “Compared to traditional molding and casting methods, using UV curing based 3D printing with the SUV elastomers significantly reduces the fabrication time from many hours, even days, to a few minutes or hours as the complicated and time-consuming fabrication steps such as mold-building, molding/demolding, and part assembly are replaced by a single 3D printing step.”

While the discovery of a highly flexible polymer that is 3D printable, may not stop the world from spinning, but its cheaper production and durability is likely to make waves in the elastomer industry. Given all these factors combined, how long will it be before 3D printing becomes a major method in the manufacture of plastic products? Or is that just stretching this new invention beyond 1100%?

Photo credit: 3D Printer and 3D Printing News

When I tell people that I work for a chemical trading company (Spotchemi a.s., as you ask), the most typical response is to make a joke about how I am an illegal drug dealer. While I do sometimes long for the Scarface lifestyle, the reality is far from the cocaine highs of 1980’s Miami.

So why do people misunderstand the chemical industry?

One of the biggest factors is that a minority of people study chemistry beyond the age of 16, but whereas other subjects are largely benign (geography never hurt anyone; geology does hurt but very, very, very slowly), chemicals can have a negative aspect (chemical weapons, chemical plant explosions etc). So even though the negative aspect is less than the smallest fraction of the industry, the powerful images it carries remain.

It is this negative picture, combined with a lack of knowledge that has lead to the public’s fear of chemicals, and a love of all things ‘natural’. This irrational fear is, of course, nonsense, as James Kennedy, a chemistry teacher from Australia, chemophobia combatant, and author of the famous ‘chemical banana’, explains.

“The distinction between natural and synthetic chemicals is not merely ambiguous, it is non-existent. The fact that an ingredient is synthetic does not automatically make it dangerous, and the fact that it is natural doesn’t make it safe. Botulinum, produced by bacteria that grow in honey, is more than 1.3 billion times as toxic as lead and is the reason why infants should never eat honey. A cup of apple seeds contains enough natural cyanide to kill an adult human.”

But, whilst this logic and the banana image are helpful in fighting chemophobia, they do not help de-mystify the subject. Use of chemical names such as botulinum, ethyle-hexanote and histidine mean nothing to the man in the street. Instead it sounds like a reading from Harry Potter’s spell book, and increases public perception of industrial chemists as a mix of mass-murderer and a sorcerer.

Maybe the chemical industry needs a better understanding of the problem. The popular blogger, chemjobber, writes that, “Ultimately, this is a problem of psychology. In the age of high-investment parenting, threats to our children can overrun any rational defence a parent might be able to construct. For whatever reason, chemical risk seems to appear much more threatening to some parents. As a chemist, I find chemophobia pretty ridiculous. As a parent, I’m in sympathy — we all fear unknown threats to our kids.”

This is a very understandable situation, and one that education could help prevent, however the chemical industry lacks a unified system to explain its actions. It is a group of hundreds of thousands of companies that merely share a common goal of providing a much derided product.

Meanwhile, anti-chemical activists are growing in stature based on a wave of populism that makes wild, easily comprehensible claims. Slogans, online quotes and gifs which state easy solutions to problems, such as ‘all Monsanto products are bad’, ‘Modern beer is chemical soup’ or the now famous, ‘There is just no acceptable level of chemical to ingest, ever.’

This last one was said by the famous healthy-living, detoxifying-guru, Foodbabe (pictured), a computer science graduate who has seen great success in various campaigns to have certain ingredients removed from food.  For example, she brought wide-spread media attention to the use of the oxidizing agent and dough conditioner azodicarbonamide in bread products sold at Subway, McDonald’s and other well known brands. Such was the negative publicity that, rightly or wrongly, most retailers had the product removed from their recipes. One of the keys to the argument was that azodicarbonamide was also used to make the bubbles in yoga mats, and was therefore a bad ingredient for food.

This must have had a devastating impact on some food chemical traders and manufacturers, and might make other chemical producers wonder where the media spotlight will fall next. Lazy science and ‘bad by association’ logic benefits no one, and instead only creates a culture of unnecessary fear. For example, the self-styled ‘food babe’ [real name Vani Hari] has also complained about the quality of air inside passenger aircraft, claiming that, “The air that is pumped in isn’t pure oxygen either; it’s mixed with nitrogen, sometimes almost at 50%.”

If you want a further laugh you can take the ‘Food Babe quiz’ at Chemistry Blog “Can you tell Vani Hari quotes from other irrational nonsense?”

While to the informed the thinking behind such statements is hilarious, it can cause fear and panic to the less-educated.

Meanwhile, the battle for sensible science and a better understanding of the chemical industry loses further ground. How this war will be won is not yet known. Chemistry is a complex field, and if pop-science is making headway with catchy phrases such as, ‘if you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it’. Then perhaps the chemical industry should fight back with some slogans of its own. As the online media reviewer ‘Whatculture’ cleverly suggests, “Perhaps a better tagline would be “If you can’t pronounce it, and you think it is cause for concern, learn to pronounce it and educate yourself on its effects in order to make an informed decision.”

But that’s not so catchy, is it?

Photo credit: James Kennedy

Photo credit: YouTube/the good life project

You don’t need a doctorate in chemical engineering to know that graphene is the material of the future. We’ve all been told how the all-powerful, single atomic-layer of graphite will change the world, just as soon as we master industrialized production.

And given the money being spent on research, this may be just a matter of time, especially as the possible applications are so far-reaching. For example, a BBC report on graphene noted its extensive list of potential uses, including, “Flexible electronic screens … a ‘thin paint’ that acts as a rust protector … an ‘electronic ink’ … act as a sensor for measuring strain, gas, magnetism or pressure … aiding drug delivery … regenerative medicine … additive for advanced composite materials to make them impermeable or conductive or stronger…[and even] ‘e-paper.’”

But all that might be about to change, as researchers from Rice University, have published findings in the Journal of American Chemical Society that outlines how a single atomic-layer of boron may prove to be a more resourceful substance.

In their computer-simulation experiments, the online scientific journal Phys.org reports, how they theorized that, “if metallic ribbons of boron are stretched, they morph into antiferromagnetic semiconducting chains, and when released they fold back into ribbons.” And also that, “The 1-D boron materials also have mechanical stiffness on a par with the highest-performing known nanomaterials.” As well as the fact that, “they can act as nanoscale, constant-force springs.”

The report continues to describe how, “One-dimensional boron forms two well-defined phases—chains and ribbons—which are linked by a ‘reversible phase transition’, meaning they can turn from one form to the other and back.

The title picture to this article shows a series of stills from a simulation of the properties of one-dimensional boron. It shows how the material starts as a ribbon transforms into a single-atom chain, until it reaches the breaking point.
You can watch a video of the experiments on this YouTube clip.

To demonstrate these interesting chemomechanics, the researchers used a computer to ‘pull’ the ends of a simulated boron ribbon with 64 atoms. This forced the atoms to rearrange into a single carbyne-like chain. In their simulation, the researchers left a fragment of the ribbon to serve as a seed, and when they released the tension, the atoms from the chain neatly returned to ribbon form.”

“Boron is very different from carbon,” said lead researcher Boris Yakobson, Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering and Professor of Chemistry at Rice University. “It prefers to form a double row of atoms, like a truss used in bridge construction. This appears to be the most stable, lowest-energy state. [So] If you pull on it, it starts unfolding; the atoms yield to this monatomic thread. And if you release the force, it folds back.”

“That’s quite fun, structurally, and at the same time it changes the electronic properties. [Which makes for] an interesting combination. Because when you stretch it halfway, you may have a portion of ribbon and a portion of chain, [but] because one of them is metal and the other is a semiconductor, this becomes a one-dimensional, adjustable Schottky junction.”

A Schottky junction is a barrier to electrons at a metal-semiconductor junction and is commonly used in diodes that allow current to flow in only one direction.

Furthermore, the ability to couple magnetic state and electronic transport in the same material will be of great interest to researchers of spintronics, a state-of-the-art form of electronics that is thought to be key to the creation of future high-performance electrical devices.

“It may be very useful because instead of charge transport, you can have spin transport. That’s considered an important direction for devices that make use of spintronics,” said Yakobson.

Given the importance that nano-materials are expected to play in all our futures, the ability to control electronics on a nano-level with a material as small as an atomic-layered sheet or single ribbon of boron could prove priceless.

While for now the findings are only theoretical, the computer simulations conducted at Rice University were also able to predict the nature and possibility of carbon-atom chains known as carbyne, as well as boron fullerenes and two-dimensional films called borophene, all of which are now a reality having been successfully predicted by the Rice computer simulations.

But in the true spirit of cutting edge material science, the research team remains excited by their dicovery, even if it will take many years to become a practical reality. As Yakobson explains, “Even if they never exist, they’re still important since we’re probing the limits of possibility, a sort of the final frontier.”

photo credit: Yakobson Group/Rice University