"These films are unique materials with unusual properties that lend themselves to many important applications," Dr. Gruen said.
Imperial pointed to research by theoretical physicist Professor Sir John Pendry, who this year won the Kavli prize in nanoscience for contributions to nano-optics, exploring how light behaves on a scale of one billionth of a metre, and work on manmade materials with unusual properties known as metamaterials.
As a competitive alternative, the sonochemical method has been extensively used to generate novel materials with unusual properties.
The recent advances in nanotechnology allow us to fabricate more and more advanced materials with unusual magnetic, electric, optical, and biological properties [1].
Most of the currently available technologies require the use of materials with unusual combinations of properties that cannot be met by metallic alloys, ceramic or conventional polymeric materials.
Possible applications include materials with unusual properties such as negative Poisson's ratio, phononic and photonic switches and colorful and reconfigurable displays.
His research interests lie in the fields of solid state chemistry, synthesis and materials design, and crystal and electronic structures of low-dimensional inorganic materials with unusual electronic properties.
Currently, the sonochemical method has been used extensively to generate novel materials with unusual properties, since they form particles of a much smaller size and higher surface area than those reported by other methods [20].
Randy Lewis, an entomologist at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, says the researchers followed a time-tested strategy of seeking out natural materials with unusual properties, as those materials often surpass humanmade designs.
The LDHs with a block replacement close to 10% leads to materials with unusual specific surface area as high as 599 m2g−1, but a higher amount of Al(C9H6NO 3 results in a decrease of the specific surface.
