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New Fiber Can Measure Water Flow

2010/7/21 11:27:00 29

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The researchers showed the sound waves that they could produce and detect.

fibre

For hundreds of years,
人造纖維”指的就是衣服和繩子的原材料，到了信息時代，纖維的意義則變成了通信網絡中攜帶數據的玻璃細絲。但是，對于麻省理工學院電子研究實驗室副教授尤爾·芬克來說，紡織品或光纖中所使用的這些纖維則過于被動。在過去的十年中，他的實驗室一直致力于開發具有更先進性能的纖維，以使纖維織物能與其周圍環境產生互動。

In a recent issue of the journal Nature and materials, Fink and his collaborators announced a landmark new functional fiber: a fiber that detects and produces sound.

The application of this fiber includes: it can be made into clothes for microphone, can capture speech or monitor body function, or make a fine single filament that can measure blood flow or pressure in capillaries.

new

fibre

The core is plastic with asymmetric molecules.

Ordinary

Optical fiber

It is made from prefabricated products, which is a large cylindrical single material that can be heated, drawn and cooled.

In contrast, the fiber developed by the Fink laboratory is to arrange several different materials carefully to keep it intact in the heating and stretching process.

The core of the new acoustic fiber is a plastic commonly used in microphones.

The fluorine content in this plastic enables researchers to ensure that their molecules are in an unbalanced state, that is, fluorine and hydrogen atoms are on one side, even during heating and stretching.

The asymmetry of this molecule causes plastic to have "piezoelectricity", which means that when an electric field is applied to it, it will change its shape.

In traditional piezoelectric microphones, the electric field is produced by metal electrodes.

However, in a fiber microphone, the stretching process causes metal electrodes to lose their shape.

Therefore, researchers substituted graphite conductive plastics.

Conductive plastics will produce a dense liquid when heated, thus maintaining higher viscosity than metal electrodes.

This not only prevents the mixing of materials, but also the most critical. It also makes the fibers have a normal thickness.

After the fibers are stretched, the researchers need to arrange all the piezoelectric molecules in the same direction.

At this point, a strong electric field (20 times stronger than the lightning induced lightning field) is needed.

Because everywhere in the fiber is very narrow, it produces a tiny lightning ball that destroys the surrounding matter.

Vocalization

fibre

Wide range of uses

Although this delicate balance is needed in the manufacturing process, researchers are able to produce this functional fiber in the laboratory.

If they are connected to a power source and applied to a sinusoidal current (very stable alternating current), these fibers will vibrate.

If it vibrates at the audio frequency and near its ears, it can hear different notes or sounds.

In the papers on nature and materials, researchers have measured the acoustic properties of fibers more strictly.

Because water can pmit sound better than air, they put fibers in a tank opposite to the standard sound energy converter. The sound pducer can send out the sound waves detected by the fibers alternately, and can also detect the sound waves emitted from the fibers.

The researchers hope to eventually take these experiments.
纖維的性能綜合在一根單一纖維中。例如，強烈振動可改變反射光纖的光學特性，從而使纖維織物可進行光學通信。除了可穿戴式麥克風和生物傳感器，該纖維的應用還包括可監測海洋中水流量的網以及高分辨率的大面積成像系統，利用這種聲學纖維織成的織物相當于數百萬個微小的聲學傳感器。研究人員表示，利用同樣的機制，壓電元件反過來也可將電力轉化為運動。