KTN Funding Column April 2012
Thursday, 21 June 2012
P-clamps, simple cushioned metal loop straps, are a common tool but when it comes to communications cables they can often be too hard – causing damage during installation or forcing cables into each other over time. However Amphenol, a manufacturer of connectors for telecoms, aerospace and industry, have developed a new clamp that can hold sensitive cables without causing damage.
The device is based on Amphenol’s original high-performance P-clamps but uses a silicone rubber with a softer durometer value that is currently used in aerospace, shipboard, and industrial applications. Tony Padula, Product Manager at Amphenol, says the LDG P-clampsolves the problem of uneven force damaging wires by “acting like a cushionaround the cables.”
“Traditional P-clamps usually force wires or cables into one another. The soft nature of the low durometer rubber, coupled with the ease-of-use mechanical design, solves the problem by acting like a cushion around the cables. It limits the amount of wire chaffing or pinching, thereby limiting wear and tear on the harnesses” said Mr Padula.
The device will be particularly useful for high-performance communication cables, such as fibre optics, coaxial, radio frequency or microwave cables, where even minor damage can result in anoticeable loss of data or signal transfer. The fragility of these cables also means that they are susceptible to damage during installation so a softer, but still firm, clamp should reduce early cable breakage.
The new silicone rubber used in the clamps is directly molded onto to Vitrex PEEK polymer, a strong, inert and inherently flame-retardant plastic, in a process that requires no adhesive. “The rubber simply will not come off the plastic, protecting against strong surges and vibration. It essentially seals the silicone rubber cushion to the plastic” Said Mr Padula.
New Balls - no, not Wimbledon - Soccer
What do the tango, which originates in Latin America, and the official soccer ball of the same name for this year’s European Soccer Championship have in common?
A variety of steps, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, an armory of twists and turns and endless vitality. Soccer fans are looking forward once again to watching exciting games in stadiums, beer gardens and their living rooms during UEFA EURO 2012TM which starts today.
One winner is already assured – the ball with the evocative name “Tango 12.” This high-tech ball is the result of long-standing, collaboration between Adidas and Bayer MaterialScience dating back to the 1986 Soccer World Cup in Mexico. A special feature of the Tango 12 is the texture of the surface, which is reminiscent of the structure of denim.
Haptical effects
Besides some interesting optical and haptical effects, it is also responsible for the particularly good flight properties of the ball. adidas also aimed to make the ball even rounder and ensure it retained its appearance. Fewer cut edges and greater curvature also mean fewer seams and edges in the outer shell. Soccer players are more likely to strike smooth surfaces and can therefore control the ball with greater precision. Measurements of the diameter at sixteen different points for each ball show that the deviation between the largest and smallest diameters is no more than one percent.
New design, proven technology
The properties of soccer balls have improved continuously since synthetic materials were first used in ball technology. “The outer shell of the Tango 12 consists of a total of five polyurethane layers based on raw materials from our Impranil® product line,” explains Thomas Michaelis, project manager for ball development at Bayer MaterialScience. “These layers provide for optimal contact with the player’s foot and for very good control in all weather conditions.” The innermost layer is an adhesion coating that connects the textile substrate to the layers above. On top of this is a syntactic foam layer, roughly one millimeter thick, made up of millions of gas-filled cells. The ball therefore quickly regains its spherical shape after being kicked, ensuring optimal flight. The ball is finished off with three compact polyurethane layers of various thicknesses. They make the surface highly resistant to external factors and abrasion, but also highly elastic, ensuring the ball retains its unique appearance over the long term.
Patented thermal bonding
The individual panels of the ball shell are bonded together using patented Thermal Bonding Technology and thus absorb essentially no moisture. As a result, the ball is no more than 0.1 percent heavier even in heavy rain and is almost completely waterproof. A raw material development from Bayer MaterialScience is used here, too – the thermoactivated adhesive is based on a waterborne polyurethane dispersion from the Dispercoll® U product line. The design of the adidas Tango 12 is reminiscent of the classic “Tango,” the ball used at FIFA Soccer World Cups™ and UEFA EURO™ tournaments in the early 1980s. However, a new feature is the reference to the two host nations Poland and Ukraine, which are represented by the colors of their flags. A graphic also recalls soccer’s key characteristics – unity, fighting spirit and passion. Another image is devoted to the ornamental art of paper cutting – a tradition in rural areas in both host nations.
Longest testing ever!
Longest test phase in development history “No adidas ball had ever undergone such an intensive test phase as the Tango 12,” says Harald Körger, responsible for ball testing at adidas. The adidas Tango 12 underwent strict testing during its two-year development phase. Professional and amateur players from various clubs and associations from eight countries tested the ball’s quality in practical use and it was also subjected to comprehensive lab trials. The Tango 12 is therefore well rounded in the truest sense of the word. Here’s to the team that can get the best results from this high-tech ball!
Ordered two-dimensional polymers created for the first time
Swiss scientists have created a minor sensation in synthetic chemistry. The team of scientists from ETH Zurich and Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, succeeded for the first time in producing regularly ordered planar polymers that form a kind of "molecular carpet" on a nanometer scale.
Back in 1920 at ETH Zurich, the chemist Hermann Staudinger postulated the existence of macromolecules consisting of many identical modules strung together like a chain. His concept was initially greeted with mockery and incomprehension from his fellow chemists. But Staudinger was to be proved right (and eventually even awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1953): today the macromolecules described as polymers are known as plastics, and by 1950 one kilogram of them was already being produced per capita worldwide. Today, more than ninety years after Staudinger’s discovery about 150 million tons of plastics are manufactured every year – a gigantic industry delivering products that our daily lives can hardly do without. A research group led by ETH Zurich scientists A. Dieter Schlüter and Junji Sakamoto has now succeeded in making a decisive breakthrough in the synthetic chemistry of polymers: they have for the first time created two-dimensional polymers.
Polymers are formed when small single molecules known as monomers join together by chemical reactions like the links of a chain to form high molecular weight substances. The question remained as to whether polymers can only polymerize linearly, i.e. in one dimension. Although graphene counts as a naturally occurring representative of a two-dimensional polymer – planar layers of carbon with a honeycomb-like pattern – it cannot be synthesized in a controlled way. In order to develop a synthetic chemistry that generates two-dimensional molecules the ETH chemists had to first and foremost create oligofunctional monomers in such a way that they join together purely two-dimensionally instead of linearly or even three- dimensionally. Polymers of this kind must have three or more covalent bonds between the regularly repeating units. The scientists had to find out which bonding chemistry and environment was most suitable for producing this kind of "olecular carpet"
Light plus special building blocks equal a "molecular carpet"
They decided to do the synthesis in a single crystal, i.e. a crystal with a homogeneous layer lattice. PhD student Patrick Kissel successfully used this to crystallize special monomers in layered hexagonal single crystals. The monomers he generated are photochemically sensitive molecules, for which such an arrangement is energetically optimum. When irradiated with light with a wavelength of 470 nanometers, the monomers polymerized in all the layers of the crystal. To separate the individual layers from one another the researchers boiled the crystal in a suitable solvent. Each layer represents a two-dimensional polymer.
The fact that the team really had succeeded in producing sheet-like polymers with regular structures was shown by special studies in a transmission electron microscope (TEM) carried out by Empa researcher Rolf Erni and Marta Rossell from ETH Zurich (who meanwhile is also working at Empa’s Electron Microscopy Center). <<These two-dimensional polymers are extremely sensitive towards irradiation. It’s really tricky to not destroy their structure during the TEM measurements, which made the analyses a real tough nut to crack", says Erni. Diffraction experiments at minus 196oC – the condensation point of nitrogen – and high-resolution images at a low electron dose allowed the Empa scientists to eventually provide proof that the cross-linked molecules indeed exhibit a regular two-dimensional structure.
Potential application: a molecular sieve
The polymerization method that was developed is so gentle that all the monomer’s functional groups are also preserved at defined positions in the polymer. Says Sakamoto, "Our synthetically manufactured polymers are not conductive like graphene, but on the other hand we would be able to use them for example to filter the tiniest molecules." In fact in the regularly arranged polymers there are small defined holes with a diameter in the sub-nanometer range. Moreover, tiny hexagons in the polymers, formed by benzene rings with three ester groups, can be removed by a simple hydrolytic process. This would form a "sieve" with an ordered structure suitable for the selective filtration of molecules.
However, before the researchers can think about practical applications, the task now is to characterize the material’s properties. First of all they must find a way to produce larger amounts and even larger sheet sizes. The size of the crystals is currently only 50 micrometers. Sakamoto stresses that "those, however, are already enormous degrees of polymerization at a molecular level."
Literature
A two-dimensional polymer prepared by organic synthesis, Kissel P, Erni R, Schweizer WB, Rossell MD, King BT, Bauer T, Götzinger S, Schlüter AD & Sakamoto J, Nature Chemistry (2012), doi: 10.1038/nchem.1265
Further information
Dr. Rolf Erni, Empa, Electron Microscopy Center, Tel. + 41 58 765 40 80, [email protected]
Dr. Marta Rossell, Empa, Electron Microscopy Center, Tel. + 41 58 765 49 02, [email protected]
Editor / media contact
Dr. Michael Hagmann, Empa, Communications, Tel. +41 58 765 45 92, [email protected]
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