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Tech researchers team up for advanced materials
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By Renay San Miguel
Ask Georgia Tech researchers working with advanced materials for examples, and they give a pop culture reference. Two of them even cite the same reference.
“It’s like The Terminator, liquid metal that then becomes a solid,” says Alberto Fernandez-Nieves, associate professor in the School of Physics.
“Think of The Terminator,” says another School of Physics associate professor, Jennifer Curtis.
Pop culture so effectively appropriates next-level science research, that it comes as no surprise that these scientists first thought of Oscar-winning director James Cameron’s shapeshifting “mimetic polyalloy” assassin from the future in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
“Or that animated movie, Big Hero 6,” Curtis adds, referring to a 2014 Disney film about nanobots combining to form bigger objects. “We would love to find an original way to create small shapes. And then make them intelligent enough to properly reconfigure in some other way.”
Georgia Tech scientists aim to make those science-fiction scenarios real through collaborative, interdisciplinary research at the Center for the Science and Technology of Advanced Materials and Interfaces (STAMI).
Launched in 2016, STAMI comprises four groups:
- Georgia Tech Polymer Network (GTPN)
- Community for Research on Active Surfaces and Interfaces (CRĀSI, pronounced crazy)
- Soft Matter Incubator (SMI)
- Organic photovoltaic materials, for solar cell technology
- Flexible organic materials that can go inside or on the body, for medical and sensing applications
- Organic materials to protect sensors and human eyes from laser pulses, of interest to the Defense Department
- Organic materials to enable rapid and safe removal of heat from its source, for computers and consumer electronics
- Electrochromism, reversibly changing a material’s color in the presence of an electric field
- Energy savings through separation of hydrocarbon and industrial chemicals using nanoporous membranes
- Energy storage, such as batteries and capacitors to store chemical energy and electrical charge
- Drug and active-molecule release using polymer-modified nanoparticles
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Status
- Workflow Status: Published
- Created By: Renay San Miguel
- Created: 05/31/2017
- Modified By: Jason Maderer
- Modified: 06/06/2017
Categories
Keywords
College of Sciences
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School of Physics
,
STAMI
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Center for Science and Technology of Advanced Materials and Interfaces
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center for organic photonics and electronics
,
Georgia Tech Polymer Network
,
Community for Research on Active Surfaces and Interfaces
,
Soft Matter Incubator
,
COPE
,
gtpn
,
SMI
,
Seth Marder
,
Jennifer Curtis
,
Alberto Fernandez-Nieves
,
john reynolds
,
Mike Filler
,
advanced materials
,
polymers
,
soft matter
,
organic light emitting diodes
,
liquid crystal diodes
,
OLEDs
,
LCDs
,
collaboration
,
interdisciplinary
,
active matrix organic light emitting diode
,
AMOLED
,
photovoltaics
,
electroluminescence
,
bioelectronics
,
squishy physics
,
Odyssey of the Mind
,
School of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering
,
Interfaces
,
School of Chemistry and Biochemistry
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