The concept of nanomaterials certainly isn’t anything new—innovations using these technologies are already slowly making their way towards everyday engineering innovations—but scientists from the University of Texas at Austin (UTexas) just managed to make the future of telecommunications and energy just made things a lot more interesting by making a new type of “nanocrystal gel” that can be tuned to change between two different states.
This gel, composed of tiny tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) nanocrystals some 10,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair, which were functionalized with terminated ligands and dispersed in N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) solvent which contained excess cobalt (Co2+) and chloride (Cl–) ions. This particular mixture of compounds enabled the overall system to be coaxed into switching between a liquid or a “gelled” state by changing its temperature.
Published in the journal Science Advances, the study was headed by UTexas graduate students Jiho Kang and Stephanie Valenzuela, and was worked on through the institution’s Center for Dynamics and Control of Materials.
“You could shift the apparent heat signature of an object by changing the infrared properties of its skin,” said UTexas McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering professor and chair Delia Milliron. “It could also be useful for telecommunications which all use infrared wavelengths.”
The operating principle governing the novel material relied on the fact that the nanocrystal gel absorbed different frequencies of light depending on its state; this, according to UTexas via Phys.org, meant that the material may present new opportunities in the field of telecommunications and defense in terms of thermal camouflage.
Additionally, the material may be incorporated into new sensors that change either state or color in the presence of specific targets, which can then be used in the detection of dangerous substances and in the targeted delivery of treatment to cancer cells.
References
- Irving, M. (2022, February 21). State-switching nanocrystal gel makes for cooling or thermal camouflage. New Atlas. https://newatlas.com/materials/nanocrystal-gel-switches-states-active-camouflage/
- Kang, J., Valenzuela, S. A., Lin, E. Y., Dominguez, M. N., Sherman, Z. M., Truskett, T. M., Anslyn, E. V., & Milliron, D. J. (2022). Colorimetric quantification of linking in thermoreversible nanocrystal gel assemblies. Science Advances, 8(7), eabm7364. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abm7364
- University of Texas at Austin. (2022, February 18). Versatile ‘nanocrystal gel’ could enable advances in energy, defense and telecommunications. Phys.Org. https://phys.org/news/2022-02-versatile-nanocrystal-gel-enable-advances.html
