A newly developed material from the University of Chicago is as malleable as plastic and yet as conductive as metal. It could revolutionize electronics.
Researchers at the University of Chicago want to shake up the world of electronics with a new type of material that is malleable like plastic and conductive like metal. The molecular fragments contained in it are not at all well ordered, but rather distributed in a completely chaotic manner. While this breaks all the rules known to be a conductivity requirement, it works. “It’s a whole new class of materials,” says materials researcher John Anderson.
Electrons slide through
Basically, organic and traditional metal conductors have one property in common. They are made up of rows of straight, densely packed atoms or molecules. This means that electrons can easily slip through the material. Anderson’s graduate student, Jiaze Xie, refused to believe that this property is a prerequisite for electrical conductivity. He began experimenting with materials discovered years ago but largely ignored. He formed double rows of nickel, carbon and sulfur atoms and arranged them in a kind of matrix.
To his amazement, the material conducted electricity extremely effectively. It has also proved very stable, unlike organic conductors, which can lose their conductivity under adverse external conditions. “We heated the new material, cooled it, exposed it to air and moisture, and even dripped acids and alkalis on it, but nothing happened,” Xie explains. This is extremely useful for a device that needs to work in the real world.
