Organic crystals, a new class of smart engineering materials, can serve as efficient and sustainable energy conversion materials for advanced technologies such as robotics and electronics, according to new research published today in the journal Nature Communications by a team of researchers from the NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Smart Materials Lab.
Organic crystals had traditionally been assumed to be brittle, however, the NYUAD researchers revealed that some organic crystals are mechanically quite tough. They created a material that sets a new world record for its capacity to change shape by expanding or contracting over half of its length without losing its precisely organized structure.
The team, led by NYUAD Professor of Chemistry Pane Naumov, outlines the procedure of measuring how the organic crystalline material behaved to different temperatures in the article titled “Exceptionally High Work Density of a Ferroelectric Dynamic Organic Crystal about Room Temperature.”
The presence of a lot of polymorphous structures with relatively similar lattice energies can make the crystallization of molecular organic molecules difficult. The packing and interaction of flexible organic molecules in the solid allows for a wide range of potential shapes, including several polymorphous crystals.
Crystal structures can have a lot of flexibility. After the discovery of the first dynamic and adaptive molecular crystals ten years ago, this idea has only recently gained traction. Microrobotics, flexible electronics, and optical systems all benefit from crystals that can bend without disintegrating.
The organic crystals were discovered to be able to reversibly alter shape in a similar way to plastics and rubber, according to the researchers. This material, in particular, could expand and contract repeatedly over half of its length (51%) without deterioration over thousands of cycles.
This latest discovery from the Smart Materials Lab at NYUAD builds on a series of our previous discoveries about the untapped potential of this new class of materials, which includes adaptive crystals, self-healing crystals, and organic crystalline materials with shape memory. Our work has shown that organic crystals can not only meet the needs of the emerging technologies, but in some cases can also surpass the levels of efficiency and sustainability of other, more common materials.
Professor Pane Naumov
It could also expand and contract at ambient temperature, unlike other materials, which require a higher temperature to change, resulting in higher operating expenses.
Unlike traditional silicon or silica-based materials, which are inevitably stiff, heavy, and brittle, future electronics materials will be soft and organic in nature.
These modern technologies necessitate materials that are light, durable, and efficient in performance, as well as mechanical flexibility and the capacity to function sustainably with little energy use.
For the first time, the findings of this study show that certain organic crystalline materials match the requirements of these technologies and can be employed in soft robotics, artificial muscles, organic optics, and organic electronics (electronics created solely from organic materials).
“This latest discovery from the Smart Materials Lab at NYUAD builds on a series of our previous discoveries about the untapped potential of this new class of materials, which includes adaptive crystals, self-healing crystals, and organic crystalline materials with shape memory,” said Naumov.
“Our work has shown that organic crystals can not only meet the needs of the emerging technologies, but in some cases can also surpass the levels of efficiency and sustainability of other, more common materials.”
