Taking their cue from biological circulatory systems, University of Illinois researchers have developed vascularized structural composites, creating materials that are lightweight and strong with potential for self-healing, self-cooling, metamaterials and more.
Composite materials are a combination of two or more materials that harness the properties of both. Composites are valued as structural materials because they can be lightweight and strong. Many composites are fiber-reinforced, made of a network of woven fibers embedded in resin – for example, graphite, fiberglass or Kevlar.
The Illinois team, part of the Autonomous Materials Systems Laboratory in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, developed a method of making fiber-reinforced composites with tiny channels for liquid or gas transport. The channels could wind through the material in one long line or branch out to form a network of capillaries, much like the vascular network in a tree.
“Trees are incredible structural materials, but they’re dynamic too,” said co-author Jeffrey Moore, the Murchison-Mallory professor of chemistry and a professor of materials science and engineering. “They can pump fluids, transfer mass and energy from the roots to the leaves. This is the first step to making synthetic materials that have that kind of functionality.”
The key to the method, published in the journal Advanced Materials, is the use of sacrificial fibers. The team treated commercially available fibers so that they would degrade at high temperatures. The sacrificial fibers are no different from normal fibers during weaving and composite fabrication. But when the temperature is raised further, the treated fibers vaporize – leaving tiny channels in their place – without affecting the structural composite material itself.
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from the UI News Bureau