Styling Spring Dandelions Discovered Wearing Mesh Metal Hats?
What Does the Word Nano Really Mean? And What is Nanomesh?
The first step to understanding dandelions wearing mesh hats is to define the word nano. According to the essay by Sacha Loeve titled "About a Definition of Nano: How to Articulate Nano and Technology" nano holds several meanings, but in each and every case the word 'nano' is associated with something very, very, very, small. Such is the case with the new metal mesh designed by researchers at the University of California, Irvine, HRL laboratories and the California Institute of Technology, which can rest on the bloom of a dandelion without damaging it.
Typical of a scientist trying to explain the nano mesh is found in this diagram below. The long and the short of the explanation is as follows according to the online article I found in Daily Tech: "To build the incredible nanomesh, the researchers first made a polymer mesh using a self-propagating photopolymer waveguide technique. Thiol-ene was the selected class of photopolymers (thiol-enes are four-branched hyrocarbon molecules with a central junction of silicon and a sulfur connector midway on each branch).
An electroless nickel plating technique was then applied. When you want to coat a solid object in metal, one common way is to use electricity to force metal atoms to stick to the surface. Another method relies on a chemical reaction to plate. In this case the reaction is between hydrated phosphates and nickel, which is auto-catalyzing.
The end result is a 100 nm thick layer of NiP, that's 7% phosphorous and 93% nickel by weight. The layer is solid, and is a (supersaturated) solution of phosphorous.
The photo plastic is then eaten away using etching techniques. What is left behind is essential tubes made out of smaller tube "beams". This tubes out of tubes approach yields a substance that's surprisingly strong, but is also 99.99 percent air."
An electroless nickel plating technique was then applied. When you want to coat a solid object in metal, one common way is to use electricity to force metal atoms to stick to the surface. Another method relies on a chemical reaction to plate. In this case the reaction is between hydrated phosphates and nickel, which is auto-catalyzing.
The end result is a 100 nm thick layer of NiP, that's 7% phosphorous and 93% nickel by weight. The layer is solid, and is a (supersaturated) solution of phosphorous.
The photo plastic is then eaten away using etching techniques. What is left behind is essential tubes made out of smaller tube "beams". This tubes out of tubes approach yields a substance that's surprisingly strong, but is also 99.99 percent air."
I consider all the possibilities for the use of this new nanomesh, but currently the cost is very expensive and not available for commercial use. So what is it good you may ask? I think we can not afford not to experiment and must press forward in the world of science. Imagine using this mesh for a webbing to keep birds from flying into the turbines of jets. Imagine wearing clothes made from mesh that never had to be washed in the conventional method---using millions of gallons of water---but instead simple shaking off the residue. As we forge into the future with nanotechnology which is applied to biology and all the sciences, we must keep in mind that in order to find answers we must try new things---some of the new ideas will be functional and some will not.
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