Cutting Edge - somewhereville (.com · 2020. 12. 22. · Teaching plastics to “speak” According to notreallyexpired.com, 40% of the food produced in the United States goes uneaten

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Arts & Sciences / Anniversary Issue / The Future of Plastics and Superconductors

Cutting Edge https://thecollege.syr.edu/anniversary-issue/cutting-edge/

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Talking milk cartons and superconducting

batteries? They may be closer than you think

magine knowing if food was spoiled just by looking at the packaging, or

having a phone battery that never overheats and lasts much longer

between charges. These possibilities could eventually be realized, thanks

to ongoing research in the Department of Chemistry.

Davoud Mozhdehi, assistant professor of chemistry, is working on an

autonomous synthetic material that could create what he calls “smart

plastics.” Steluța A. Dincă, research assistant professor of chemistry, and a

team of chemists are working to develop a superconductor that could store

vast amounts of energy and make the electrical power grid much more

efficient.


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Teaching plastics to “speak”

According to notreallyexpired.com, 40% of the food produced in the United States goes uneaten

each year, resulting in 160 billion pounds of wasted food. At the same time, 37 million Americans

struggle with hunger, according to feedingamerica.org. A new kind of plastic could be part of the

solution to the problem of food waste.

Much of that waste is due to confusion over the sell-by and use-by date labels and whether or not

food is actually expired. Imagine having a milk container programmed to analyze its contents and

alert the consumer that the milk is spoiled. Such a product could eliminate the need for the smell test

and our uncertainties about the use-by date stamped on packaging and ensure that the milk we are

consuming is safe to drink.

Most food is thrown away in America

not because it is rotten, like these

berries, but because of confusion over

sell-by dates.

To make this vision a reality, researchers in Assistant Professor of Chemistry Davoud Mozhdehi’s lab

are working to develop a new form of synthetic polymer that can consume fuel (i.e., the potentially

spoiled food), change after eating and emit a visual signal. Similar to the way the human body

produces heat after eating food, these new synthetic polymers, known as Thermally Energized Self-

Regulating Materials System (ThERMoS), will generate heat after consuming energy. The heat

generated would then create a visual cue for the consumer.


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A seismic shift

Plastics were created to take the place of metal and glass, both static materials. Mozhdehi and his

team are essentially training plastics to act in a much different manner—interacting with their

environment and converting chemical energy into usable feedback.

“Our goal is to make plastics that make a decision by using the energy acquired from eating,” says

Mozhdehi. “This is a profound transformation in the use and properties of plastics.”

In the case of the spoiled milk, when bacteria begin to grow, the trained plastic would change color

to alert the consumer that it is no longer safe to drink. In time, the response generated from this kind

of smart plastic interaction could make use-by and sell-by dates much more accurate, reassuring

consumers that there is no need to discard that unopened package, and no need to add to the food

waste crisis.

Although it may be years until this technology is viable on the consumer level, thanks to Mozhdehi’s

research and others in BioInspired Syracuse: Institute for Material and Living Systems, what sounds

like science fiction may someday be a reality.

Mozhdehi’s research is being funded through a grant from the American Chemical Society’s

Petroleum Research Fund (PRF). PRF grants are awarded to fundamental research in the petroleum

field. Since most plastics are derived from petroleum, research that could advance polymer

technology is supported by the PRF.


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Resistance is futile

Whenever you use an electrical device, you encounter electrical resistance. This resistance causes

your computer to run hot, batteries to heat up and degrade, and electrical motors in appliances to

overheat.

What causes this resistance? The electrons flowing through the copper wires in your house collide

with the wires’ copper atoms, like a tiny, quantum mechanical game of billiards. In each collision, the

electrons lose some of their energy. These collisions transfer energy from the moving electrons to

the copper atoms, causing resistance to the overall flow of electrons in the form of friction. This

friction is the reason why wires become warm to the touch.

It’s also why energy costs what it does. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, an

average of 5% of the energy generated by power plants is lost due to electrical resistance just in the

power lines.

The holy grail of power

Can a better material be created that can both conduct electricity without resistance - a room-

temperature superconductor – and be used beyond just the experimental laboratory?

It’s been the holy grail of researchers worldwide for decades. Today, a team of researchers in A&S is

working on a superconducting material that just might overcome the stumbling blocks around this

idea.

One of the enduring challenges in creating economical room-temperature superconductive

materials is their lack of practicality outside the lab. For example, only certain metals, ceramics and

organic salts are known to conduct electricity with no resistance, and they must be cooled to

extremely low temperatures or incredibly high pressures before their resistance drops to zero.

For example, some cuprates—ceramic materials made of copper and oxygen—become

superconductors at around 140 K (-140 C, -208 F). That’s easy to achieve in a laboratory, but not


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Cutting Edge - somewhereville (.com · 2020. 12. 22. · Teaching plastics to “speak” According to notreallyexpired.com, 40% of the food produced in the United States goes uneaten

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