Snake vs block skins list series#
To prove just how snake-like their invention is, he and his colleagues-including Mengyuan Wang, who recently earned her PhD from CU Boulder-ran a series of seemingly simple tests. “You can touch it, and your finger will slip.” Slipping and sliding
This results in the laboratory equivalent of snakeskin boots.
Snake vs block skins list skin#
Once there, those building blocks infiltrate the PDMS and form a hybrid skin layer. The method, Ding explained, works by mixing small molecules into a film of liquid, then using light to get them to fall out of suspension-a bit like peas sinking to the bottom of a bowl of soup. The researchers then used the SLIP technique to place a thin, scale-like layer of synthetic material onto that foundation. The group began with a base made out of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), an elastic material common in many medical technologies. It’s also the feature that Ding and his colleagues wanted to replicate in the lab. That combination of hard on top of soft gives snakes their edge, helping them to keep their friction low while still remaining flexible. Then the scale gradually transitions to a much softer material below.” “The top layer is like keratin, what our fingernails are made of,” Ding said. If you put one of these small structures under a microscope, you’ll notice that they’re made up of many layers of tissue stacked on top of each other. Snakes, from striped garter snakes to bright-green vine snakes, owe a lot of their success to their scales. That’s now possible, thanks to the oft-hated snake. “Rather, you have to modify the surface itself.” “There are a lot of new engineering applications, like soft robots or wearable sensors, where you can’t use these traditional liquid lubricants,” said Ding who is also part of the Materials Science and Engineering Program at CU Boulder.
The technology could be a boon for machines that battle friction but can’t tolerate getting wet. Top: Snake scales seen up close bottom: Snakeskin-inspired synthetic "skin" seen under the microscope. That layer looks a lot like the scales of a snake and can turn an otherwise sticky surface into a slip hazard. In their latest study, the researchers developed a tool called solid-liquid interfacial polymerization (SLIP) that allows them to lay a thin layer of skin onto existing surfaces like rubber or stretchy materials called elastomers. “It can also move really fast if it needs to, in part because its skin has such low friction.” Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering. “A snake’s body is soft enough that it can twist itself into all kinds of shapes,” said Ding, a professor in the Paul M. To try to reduce that loss, he and his colleagues took cues from nature-specifically, its most slithery members. Yifu Ding, senior author of the new paper, explained that every day, machines from robots to cars lose tremendous amounts of energy simply because their parts rub together. The research, published recently in the American Chemical Society journal Applied Materials & Interfaces, addresses an underappreciated problem in engineering: Friction.
A research team led by CU Boulder has designed a new kind of synthetic “skin” as slippery as the scales of a snake.
0 kommentar(er)
