I find the science and technology of new material fascinating. Graphene and nanoscale electrodes and metamaterials and tuneable coloured glass and... Well, I think it's all pretty cool, and love imagining what could be cone with this new stuff. If you find it interesting too, post links to new materials and new uses of them, and we can all speculate wildly.
Today, I've seen two fun articles:
Penn Researchers Make Thinnest Plates That Can Be Picked Up by HandResearchers at the University of Pennsylvania have now created the thinnest plates that can be picked up and manipulated by hand. Despite being thousands of times thinner than a sheet of paper and hundreds of times thinner than household cling wrap or aluminum foil, their corrugated plates of aluminum oxide spring back to their original shape after being bent and twisted.
I wonder if a composite with graphene would be possible, giving a super thin, untearable, flexible material.
Nanoscale drawbridges open path to color displaysRice develops first method for reversible color changes with metal nanoparticles. A new method for building “drawbridges” between metal nanoparticles may allow electronics makers to build full-color displays using light-scattering nanoparticles that are similar to the gold materials that medieval artisans used to create red stained-glass.
I would love to see the gorilla glass be the display surface one day, with the battery and electronics in a thin bezel around the edge of a phone.