Beyond Surfaces

When the rain comes, you might want to sport your rain jacket and rain boots – your waterproof gears. Those gears are designed so their surface would not allow water to come through. We have for a long time devised different surfaces to fit our needs, such as your rain gears. But what about what lies underneath the surface?

At MIT, Michael Demkowicz of Department of Materials Science and Engineering, with his colleagues, seeks to explore that which lies underneath the surface: the interfaces between the particles of a certain material. The control of those inner surfaces can allow great possibility in customizing any material’s properties: durability, elasticity, and resiliency, just to name a few.

However, maneuvering over those interfaces is not an easy task. Demkowicz said, “People don’t think of [surfaces between the crystals of a material] as surfaces. If they do, they think of it as a uniform surface, but as it turns out, most interfaces are not uniform.” Due to the inconsistency of the interfaces, scientists have to treat each interface as its own surface whose calculations are run through by computer stimulation.

The application of the control of interfaces could be of great array, said Demkowicz. An example could be the interior walls of fusion power reactors. These walls are constantly being hit by alpha particles, which form bubbles inside and weaken the walls. This problem can be countered if the interfaces between the crystals in the wall could be made in a way that allow alpha particles to pass through inside of staying and deteriorating the wall. Following the same logic, different materials could be tailored to fit different needs.

I am interested in this article because of its application to nuclear power, something that has great potential but also possesses great risk. If the ability to customize materials’ properties can reduce that risk, then not only will it open new opportunities for the rise of innovated materials, but also allow nuclear power to be more safely explored.

http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/hidden-surface-patterns-better-materials-0829

Submitted by Tram Dao