What happens when gold and silver just don’t cut it anymore? You turn to metallic alloys, which are what Army researchers are using to develop new designer materials with a broad range of capabilities for our Soldiers.
This is exactly what scientists Dr. David Baker and Dr. Joshua McClure from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory are doing to lighten the load and enhance the power of Soldier devices used on the battlefield.
Their research, conducted in collaboration with Prof. Marina Leite and Dr. Chen Gong at the University of Maryland and Prof. Alexandre Rocha at the Universidade Estadual Paulista in Brazil, was recently featured on the cover of the Sept. 4 issue of Advanced Optical Materials.
The research paper, “Band Structure Engineering by Alloying for Photonics,” focuses on control of the optical and plasmonic properties of gold and silver alloys by changing alloy chemical composition.
For my final line-up I would love to use some smart fabrics and after having a look around I found a lot that I think would be great to use.
Temperature sensitive fabrics Clothings main job is to keep up warm or cool so it makes sense that the smart material industry is looking into making fabrics that can regulate body temperature. These types of fabrics are mostly seen in windbreakers and beanies. Junor Campbell design and development manager for Mountain Designs says its hats, beanies and jackets are often treated with paraffins.“Paraffin changes its character. As you get hot it becomes more liquid and all that heat to pass out,” says Campbell. “As the body gets cold it solidifies and keeps heat back with the wearer.” Other fabrics that are also starting to appear are ones that conduct electricity to monitor your body temperature but because they are still so new they are very expensive but one company that wants to launch in this market with a more reasonable price range, Australian Wool Innovators, want to make socks that will be able to keep your toes toastie at 30 degrees centigrade but also feel like any other sock and being washable.
Odour Eaters There are also fabrics that are being developed that are suited for more health reasons, fabrics with anti-bacterial treatments. Materials that are treated with silver seem to be working best and the garment that seems to be best for this type of fabric is underwear, you can treat underwear with anti-bacterial but it washed out but they have found that if it has silver added to it, the same effect happens but it is permanent. Microencapsulation technology, which allows a whole swathe of substances including aloe vera, vitamins or insect repellents to be added to the fabric, is creating endless possibilities.
Medical Material Microencapsulated fabrics is best for medical treatments, mainly in the natural health sector. Materials with vitamin E are great for scarring and theres also a good market in materials for diabetes and improving circulation. There has been development in smart fabrics called bio-therapeutic textiles where they look to isolating the chemical properties of gold fly maggots that are known to combat wound infection, this could be extremely useful when it comes to dressings and bandages. For electrically conductive smart fabrics there is a much greater medical use, for example, in hospitals they could be used to create life vests that would monitor your heart rate, ECG and body temperature and you could have every patient wearing one with the results all going back to the nurses in a central office to be monitored. Though it would be a very long time until this could be seen as a reality because this type of technology is still extremely expensive.
The research team of researcher Hyunseon Seo and senior researcher Dr. Donghee Son of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology’s Biomedical Research Institute, postdoctoral candidate Dr. Jiheong Kang and Professor Zhenan Bao of Stanford University (chemical engineering) announced a new material with high stretchability and high electrical conductivity, with the ability to self-heal even after being subjected to severe mechanical strain. The material could have application in wearable electronic devices.
Prior to this study, Dr. Donghee Son, Dr. Jiheong Kang, and Prof. Zhenan Bao developed a polymer material that is highly elastic, can self-heal without the help of external stimuli even when exposed to water or sweat, and has a mechanical strength similar to that of human skin, making it comfortable to wear for long periods of time.
In its most recent study, the KIST-Stanford research team developed the new material, which can be used as an interconnect, as it has the same properties as existing wearable materials and high levels of electrical conductivity and stretchability, characteristics which allow the stable transmission of electricity and data from the human body to electronic devices.
(Oops posted on the wrong account) Anyways someone told me to draw Silver’s buff arms and so I did. Drawing men is difficult for me but I’ll keep trying until I can draw them comfortably! I love this sleepy boi
My video out later today is on the Rust Dragon from the 3.5 draconomicon. Which I’ve brought over to 5e with these stats. Check out my channel for more videos.
Dragon Slayers, God Slayers, and now Devil Slayers… How many types of Slayer will there be?! Silver kind of looks like Gray. Probably his relative, different world self, or future self. I mean he has the same eyes, color of hair, type of jewelry, type of magic like Gray. And the name as in color is very similar to each other. Silver… Gray… (Silver IS shinier though LOL) IDK. What do you guys think?
Sliver Tetradrachm of Alexander the Great wearing a lion skin helmet. The coin was minted in Babylon around 324 BCE. The city was the capital of the Macedonian king’s vast empire and where he died in 323 BCE. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, PA.
Its been a while, huh? Figured the best way to give me some energy to post new boards is to make a couple for my ocs. So, here’s Mir! Gonna do one for his partner next. Hopefully it’ll get me back into the swing of making boards :)
