The research is a long way from store shelves, but in the meantime one of the Drexel engineers is seeing it in a different light - as art.
Using an electron microscope, Babak Anasori captures images of the nanosheets, which remind him of rocky crags, caverns, and other terrain in the full-size world. He then adds artificial color to some of the images, one of which just won the People's Choice award in an annual photo contest sponsored by the journal Science and the National Science Foundation.
"You have to sometimes put the science part aside and think about it as a piece of art," said Anasori, who is working toward a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering.
Anasori takes the pictures with an electron microscope, a dishwasher-size piece of equipment that captures images by scanning objects with a beam of electrons. Michael Naguib, a fellow Ph.D. student, fabricated the nanosheet material depicted in the prizewinning image, using a compound of titanium and carbon.
The two of them work with Drexel professors Michel Barsoum and Yury Gogotsi.
It all began 15 years ago, when Barsoum developed a new class of compounds known as MAX phase materials, each made of three elements. The M represents an "early transition metal" such as titanium. The A stands for a so-called group A element, such as aluminum or silicon. The X represents carbon or nitrogen.
These materials have a dual identity, enjoying some of the best characteristics of both metals and ceramics. In addition to being good conductors, they are machinable, lightweight and highly heat-tolerant.
Research is continuing, but Barsoum has numerous applications in mind, such as jet engines and protective industrial coatings. He recently published a paper reporting that they could be useful as components of next-generation nuclear reactors.
