Logan Ritchie | ABI | UoA 3MT People's Choice 2024 — Transcript

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1. 0:03most human-made materials are built to
2. 0:06serve one specific purpose but
3. 0:08biomaterials like skin and muscle these
4. 0:11are capable of a wide range of complex
5. 0:14behaviors they can do this because
6. 0:16they're composed of an immense number of
7. 0:18tiny nanosized components all working
8. 0:22together we can call such materials
9. 0:24complex Nano Composites and actually we
10. 0:27can create examples of these ourselves
11. 0:30in our lab we combine conductive nanop
12. 0:32particles with rubber to create
13. 0:34materials that conduct electricity but
14. 0:36can also stretch and change their
15. 0:38electrical properties and my research is
16. 0:41on computational modeling to explain how
17. 0:44these material properties can emerge
18. 0:46from nanoscale components and this
19. 0:48modeling is centered around a core
20. 0:50concept called
21. 0:52percolation now percolation isn't
22. 0:54actually unique to nanoc Composites it
23. 0:56could apply to this room just imagine I
24. 0:58have a note for someone in the back I
25. 1:00might pass it to you and ask you to pass
26. 1:03it along percolation asks is that
27. 1:07possible is there a continuous path of
28. 1:09connections stretching all the way to
29. 1:11the back and that very same question
30. 1:14applies to these materials where the
31. 1:16flow of electricity between particles is
32. 1:18like this passing of a note at the top
33. 1:20you can see what it looks like as a
34. 1:22conductive pathway forms and changes
35. 1:25with increasing particle density my work
36. 1:28is focused on two key question questions
37. 1:30how do the structural features of this
38. 1:33pathway relate to the characteristics of
39. 1:35the material and how does that structure
40. 1:38change when the material is stretched
41. 1:40and here traditional percolation Theory
42. 1:43alone can't tell us everything as it
43. 1:45assumes that the particles are just
44. 1:46randomly distributed now you don't pick
45. 1:49a seat at random you interact with one
46. 1:52another likely you want to sit with your
47. 1:55friends in this manner you form clusters
48. 1:58and the exact size and shape of these
49. 2:00clusters depends on how you interact
50. 2:03communication students form large
51. 2:05clusters containing lots of friends
52. 2:07Engineers they form smaller
53. 2:10clusters they don't have many
54. 2:12friends nanocomposites are the same even
55. 2:16a simple combination of conductive
56. 2:18particles and rubber belies a complex
57. 2:21network of electrical and mechanical
58. 2:23interactions so this interaction based
59. 2:26modeling so far has shown how stretching
60. 2:29these materials can change structural
61. 2:31features like the degree of clustering
62. 2:34and that in turn changes the
63. 2:36conductivity a better understanding of
64. 2:38these relationships between nanoscale
65. 2:41interactions and large scale Network
66. 2:43properties is one nanosized component of
67. 2:47a wider project to understand and
68. 2:49develop materials with properties that
69. 2:51are as varied and complex as biological
70. 2:55matter thank you