Our latest work on high-rate nanofluidic energy absorption is published in Nature Materials and selected as the Front Cover.
(Design: Ella Maru Studio and Thomas Phillips)
In this work, we found that the pressurised water intrusion into hydrophobic nanoporous materials with nanocages (e.g., ZIF-8, ZIF-71) can give rise to a reusable shock absorber with a much greater energy absorption when subjected to a high-speed mechanical impact compared to a static compression.
(Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar at Oxford's High Strain Rate Group)
Simulations by our collaborators at the Centre for Molecular Modelling at Ghent University demonstrated that this rate-dependent phenomenon is related to the time scale of water clustering inside the hydrophobic nanocages.
(Video courtesy of the Center for Molecular Modeling, Ghent University, on Youtube)
This work attracted a large number of media coverage, you may want to check out some of the following: Press Release, IOM3, Chemistry World, Physics World, The Science Times, AZO Materials, Road.cc, and Sven's post 'Behind the Paper'.
Thanks to the fantastic collaboration from all the co-authors from Oxford (MMC lab, High Strain Rate Group) and Ghent (Centre for Molecular Modeling)!
Read the paper:
Sun, Y., Rogge, S.M., Lamaire, A., Vandenbrande, S., Wieme, J., Siviour, C.R., Van Speybroeck, V. and Tan, J.C., 2021. High-rate nanofluidic energy absorption in porous zeolitic frameworks. Nature Materials, 20(7), pp.1015-1023.