SAN JOSE, Calif. - 15 May 2014: Scientists from IBM Research (NYSE: IBM) have successfully demonstrated a new class of polymer materials that can potentially transform manufacturing and fabrication in the fields of transportation, aerospace, and microelectronics. Through the unique approach of combining high performance computing with synthetic polymer chemistry, the scientists discovered a new class of polymers that are resistant to cracking, stronger than bone, can reform to its original shape (self-heal), and completely recyclable. Also, these materials can be transformed into new polymer structures to further bolster their strength by 50% - making them ultra strong and lightweight. This could impact almost every industry looking to innovate across engineering, product design and spur new technologies. Polymers, a long chain of molecules that are connected through chemical bonds, are an indispensable part of everyday life. They are a core material in common items ranging from clothing and drink bottles (polyesters), paints (polyacrylics), plastic milk bottles (polyethylene), secure food packaging (polyolefins, polystyrene) to major parts of cars and planes (epoxies, polyamides and polyimides). They are also essential components in virtually every emerging advanced technology dating back to the industrial revolution the steam engine, the space ship, the computer, the mobile phone.
However, today's polymer materials are limited in some ways. In transportation and aerospace, structural components or composites are exposed to many environmental factors (de-icing of planes, exposure to fuels, cleaning products, etc.) and bear poor environmental stress crack resistance (i.e., catastrophic failure upon exposure to a solvent). Also, these polymers are difficult to recycle because they cannot be remolded or reworked once cured or thermally decomposed upon heating to high temperatures. As a result, these end up in the landfill together with toxins such as plasticizers, fillers, and color additives which are not biodegradable.
IBM's discovery of a new family of materials with a range of tunable and desirable properties provides a new opportunity for exploratory research and applications development to academia, materials manufacturers and end users of high performance materials. Two new related classes of materials have been discovered which possess a very distinctive range of properties that include high stiffness, solvent resistance, the ability to heal themselves once a crack is introduced and can be used as a resin for filled composite materials to further bolster its strength.
Also, the ability to selectively recycle a structural component would have significant impact in the semiconductor industry, advanced manufacturing or advanced composites for transportation, as one would be able to rework high-value but defective manufactured parts or chips instead of throwing them away. This would bolster fabrication yields, save money and significantly decrease microelectronic waste.
Although there has been significant work in high-performance materials, today's engineered polymers still lack several fundamental attributes. New materials innovation is critical to addressing major global challenges, developing new products and emerging disruptive technologies, said James Hedrick, Advanced Organic Materials Scientist, IBM Research. We're now able to predict how molecules will respond to chemical reactions and build new polymer structures with significant guidance from computation that facilitates accelerated materials discovery. This is unique to IBM and allows us to address the complex needs of advanced materials for applications in transportation, microelectronic or advanced manufacturing. This research was published today in the peer-reviewed journal, Science.
Materials science innovation
The field of material science is often thought of as a mature field, with the most recent new class of polymer materials being discovered and introduced to the commercial market decades ago. Also, most current polymer research involves studying polymers that are old polymers and combining known polymers together or simply adjusting chemical functional groups on known polymers to access desired properties, as opposed to making completely new polymers.
IBM scientists used a novel computational chemistry' hybrid approach to accelerate the materials discovery process that couples lab experimentation with the use of high-performance computing to model new polymer forming reactions. The unconventional method is a departure from traditional techniques and led to the identification of several previously undiscovered classes of polymers in what was believed to be an established area of materials science researched extensively since the 1950s.
Ideally, scientists could insert a list of requirements into a computer to design a material that meets those exact conditions. Unfortunately, the reality now is that materials are still primarily discovered only by experimenting in the lab based on the scientist's knowledge, experience and educated guesses. IBM Research's computational chemistry efforts can take out a lot of this guesswork and accelerate a whole new range of potential applications from developing a disease-specific drugs or cheap, light, tough and completely recyclable panels on a car.
How it Works
These polymers, formed through a condensation reaction where molecules join together and lose small molecules as by-products such as water or alcohol, were created in an operationally simple procedure and are incredibly tunable.
At low temperatures (just over room temperature), and with very inexpensive starting chemicals, one type of polymer is formed that is stronger than most polymers, but still maintains its flexibility because of solvent that is trapped within the n
