Participating Group (2020-2021)
Development of Stimuli-Responsive Metal Soft Crystals
Research Outline
Living organisms are composed by hierarchical structures in size from nanoscale to order of meters. Due to such structure, a huge system (e.g., muscle) is constructed to efficiently and complexly move in response to the stimuli from external environment. The natural clay mineral, which is a simpler system than living organisms, is characterized by having both the functionality (adsorption, ion exchange) derived from the nanosheet layered structure and the special physical properties (plasticity and viscosity) due to the mixing with water. Inspired by the special structure of clay in the natural world, this research will develop a soft and plastic metal crystal materials that show stimuli-responsive to the external mechanical stress. It also provides a method for easily synthesizing thin single-crystal metal nanosheets by using bilayer structure as a two-dimensional template. It will develop metal soft crystal structures with a free-standing layered structure based on these microscale nanosheets and further develop their functions.
