I-Corps: ENERGY ABSORBING DEVICE MADE FROM LIQUID CRYSTAL ELASTOMER / NICKEL-TITANIUM SHAPE-MEMORY ALLOY (LCE/NITI) COMPOSITE MATERIAL

I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是使用创新方法来创造现实世界的吸能、可定制的材料，这些材料可以针对一系列市场和应用进行定制，从而提供切实的社会效益。例如，这项新技术可以通过添加替代椎间盘的材料来帮助患有退行性椎间盘疾病的患者。这种应用降低了并发症发生率，改善了减震和生物相容性，总体上提高了患者满意度。该技术还通过在防护服中提供优越的能量耗散，为运动员、军队和其他人提供了重大的公共健康益处。其中一个很有前途的应用是在足球头盔中添加额外的衬里材料，以减少脑震荡的发生。其他潜在领域包括汽车或航空航天工业的能量吸收和减振应用，从乘客安全和舒适性到在碰撞、损坏和不稳定的情况下隔离关键电子元件。这些应用程序都旨在改善人类健康和安全，每年代表着数十亿美元的市场和成千上万的潜在用户。I-Corps项目将结合液晶弹性体（LCEs）和镍钛（NiTi）的互补特性，创造出一种独特的复合材料，具有卓越的机械性能和高度可定制的性能。对LCEs的研究已经证明它们具有优异的吸能性能和韧性，其性能超过了大多数其他类橡胶材料。然而，典型的聚氨酯橡胶或硅树脂本质上是柔软的和/或从大变形中恢复缓慢；这限制了它在许多重要情况下的有用性。NiTi是弥补这些缺点的理想材料，因为它有自己的一套独特的特性。与金属类似，NiTi的强度和硬度比LCEs高几个数量级，但NiTi也会经历形状记忆行为，导致大的可恢复变形。此外，它还为lce提供偏置应力，这将大大缩短复合材料的恢复时间。这些独特而多样的特性的结合将使复合材料具有一定程度的定制和定制行为，这是任何成分单独无法实现的，从研究角度和作为市场产品的吸引力来看，都将引起人们的兴趣。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the use of innovative approaches to create real-world energy-absorbing, customizable materials that may be tailored to a range of markets and applications that provide tangible societal benefits. For example, this new technology could help patients suffering degenerative spinal disc disease by adding material to replacement intervertebral discs. This application leads to reduced complication rates, improved shock absorption and biocompatibility, and overall increased patient satisfaction. The technology also provides a major public health benefit to athletes, the military, and others by providing superior energy dissipation in protective apparel. One such promising application is an additional lining material in football helmets to reduce the occurrence of concussions. Other potential fields include energy absorbing and vibration damping applications for the automotive or aerospace industries ranging from passenger safety and comfort to isolating critical electronic components in the event of impact, damage, and instability. Each of these applications aims to improve human health and safety, and represents billion dollars a year markets and hundreds of thousands of potential users. This I-Corps project will combine the complementary properties of liquid crystalline elastomers (LCEs) and nickel-titanium (NiTi) to create a unique composite material that has exceptional mechanical properties, and a high degree of tailorable behavior. Research into LCEs has proven they have excellent energy absorbing behavior and toughness, with performance exceeding that of most other rubber-like materials. However, typical polyurethane rubbers or silicones are inherently soft and/or have a slow recovery from large deformations; this limits its usefulness in many important situations. NiTi is the ideal material to compliment these shortcomings due to its own set of unique characteristics. Similar to metals, it is orders of magnitude stronger and stiffer than LCEs, but NiTi also undergoes shape-memory behavior that leads large recoverable deformation. Additionally, it also provides biasing stress to the LCEs that should greatly reduce the recovery time of the composite material. The combination of these unique and varied properties will give the composite material a level of customization and tailored behavior that is simply not achievable with any of the constituents independently and will be of interest from both a research perspective and attractive as a marketable product.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.