Spartan Engineers at Michigan State University are working to mitigate traumatic brain injuries in sports, car accidents, and battle fields by putting the potential of liquid nanofoam to work.
Assistant professor Weiyi Lu, of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, said liquid nanofoam has high-energy absorption capacity that is recoverable and could be used in the development of reliable and reusable functional materials.
"Our understanding on the mechanisms of the nanoscale liquid inflow and outflow will guide future designs of advanced helmet liners and passive safety devices on vehicles," he explained.
Lu and his research partners - Mingzhe Li, a civil engineering research associate at MSU, and the research group of Baoxing Xu, including Yuan Gao and Yue Zhang at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Virginia, have demonstrated a continuous and spontaneous liquid outflow from hydrophobic nanopores.
"This is of great significance for the design of new functional materials and structures," Lu continued. "We're leveraging unique nanopore-liquid interactions to explore reusable devices in the broad scope of nanoporous materials and non-wettable liquids environments.
"In the future, we plan to test the nanoscale liquid inflow and outflow behaviors at high strain rates. Those are the real-life scenarios that can cause traumatic brain injuries. There is good potential to save lives in what we learn," he added.
Read more on emerging nanoporous-liquid functional systems in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.