New programmable metamaterial is made from rubber filled with tiny magnets. These magnets control the phase shift of the metamaterial that allows it to either absorb or release extreme amounts of energy.
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Imagine a piece of rubber used to hold things. Now put it on your finger, aim, and release. Unless you screw up it will fly across the whole room. Now imagine a piece of super-rubber. When you stretch it to a certain length you will activate the extra energy that is hidden in the material. Alfred Crosby from the University of Massachusetts who came up with this comparison says that if you’d fire off the super-rubber it would fly for at least a kilometer.
The best thing? Such a super-rubber does exist. Well, actually it is a material with the properties we talk about. Crosby and his team have created a rubber-like substance with incredible properties. It can absorb and release staggering amounts of energy. And it is actually programmable. The new material promises a good number of possible applications from enhancing the possibilities of robots without an additional source of energy to new protective materials that will effectively displace energy.
The new material is a metamaterial that combines a flexible gum with tiny magnets placed inside. This created an elasto-magnetic material that uses phase-shifting to massively increase the amount of absorbed and released energy. The phase shift happens when the material changes its phase or state of matter. Like when water evaporates or freezes.
For some time, we knew what these materials should look like. But it was very hard to create something like it. The key was to use a metamaterial that would allow us to overcome the current technical difficulties and also develop algorithms that will allow us to program the properties of such material.
The researchers were inspired by the lightning-quick movements in nature and improved them to the next level. The implanted tiny magnets control the phase shifts of the magnetic rubber so the behavior of the metamaterial can be programmed allowing the magnetic rubber to absorb the energy of a massive impact or explosively release a lot of energy.
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