Instant Genius - Sustainability Special - The potential of smart materials

Episode Date: September 24, 2023

We humans depend on the Earth’s natural resources for our very existence so it’s vital that we take as good care of them as we can. However, it’s abundantly clear that the environment isn’t in great shape at the moment. In this special six-part series we explore the different factors affecting the sustainability of our natural resources, investigate what their current state is and discuss what we could be doing to take better care of them. Smart materials are a tool that have grown in popularity in recent years. Able to change properties back and forth, these materials can be used to revolutionise everything from the clothing industry to the buildings that we live in, making our world both smarter and more sustainable. We’re joined by Anna Ploszajski, a material scientist and writer to find out more about these materials. She guides us through shape-shifting clothes, heat-absorbing roof tiles and everything in-between. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We humans depend on the Earth's natural resources for our very existence. So it's vital that we take as good care. care of them as we can. However, it's abundantly clear that the environment isn't in great shape at the moment. In this special six-part series, we explore the different factors affecting the sustainability of our natural resources, investigate what their current state is, and discuss what we could be doing to take better care of them. This week, we're talking about smart materials and how they can change the world we live in. I'm joined by Anna Porshyski to discuss us this topic. She's a material scientist and writer. She explains how smart materials work,

what they can be used for, and how they have the ability to change everything from fashion to architecture. So I think the term smart materials is hugely expansive. It seems to just cover so many different things. Could you just explain what they actually are? Smart materials are a kind of family of materials that all have one thing in common, which is that they have a property which might be their shape or their colour, and that property can change in response to changes that happen in that materials environment. For example, changes in temperature or light levels or magnetic fields or moisture levels, that kind of thing. And they sort of fall into these six different categories. So that would be colour changing, sensing, moving, heating and cooling,

self-healing and phase-changing, which is sort of freezing and melting. So, as you said, a very, very broad range of abilities of these materials. And could you give some examples of some of these items that might fit within these different categories? Yeah, I mean, there's everyday examples that people will see, for example, photochromic sunglasses, you know, those eyeglasses that are transparent and colourless indoors and then when you step outside into bright sunlight, they change colour and go darker to turn into sunglasses. Those are very commonly available. Other examples, things like if anyone's ever had a stent put in their artery, right? That's sort of expandable medical device to help arteries stay open. Those are sometimes made from what are called

shape memory alloys, which are metals that can respond to a change in temperature in order to change shapes. So you kind of put them in via keyhole surgery and then you inflate them once they're inside the body. And I assume with this kind of technology, for the most part, it's more used in, I guess, context of businesses, infrastructure, that sort of thing, and less so in the consumer world. Yes, yeah, I would say so, although there are more and more. there's more interest in incorporating smart materials into the consumer side as well. I've seen a few companies like Nike and a lot of the sportswear companies that seem to be jumping in on it a lot. Exactly, yeah, sort of those relatively, I don't know, potentially high-end designers who are looking at temperature and moisture responsive clothing that will regulate,

or help you to regulate your own body temperature in response to your body temperature by becoming more or less. they're insulating. Those sorts of applications, I think, are really, really cool. And how long would you say that smart materials have been around? Is this just something that's, you know, the dawn of time and it's just sort of like used in different ways and we've just advanced our understanding of it as time's gone on? Yeah, I think it's more the latter. You know, there are lots of what we would define as a smart material in nature. The humble pine cone is probably my favourite example of that. You know, pine cones have a shape where they've got lots of little spines sort of on the outside. And those spines, they're able to move and kind of wrap themselves

around the pine cone or open out to become a more open structure in response to moisture levels in the environment. And they sort of, in that way, they kind of, if you speed up the image of that, they kind of look like they're breathing almost as they dry out and then get wet again. So lots of examples in nature that we would define as smart materials. But in terms of human-made materials, the oldest material that I think we would probably define as being smart is the lime water that was used to build the pyramids of Giza, you know, four and a half thousand years ago. That line mortar is actually self-healing. So it has substances in there that when they react, when a crack forms and the substances react with the air, they form these little crystals

which knit together and reform to heal that crack. But in terms of how we recognise smart materials, I'd say probably it was Pierre and Jacques Curie of Mary Curie's relatives, who they were the ones that discovered the effect of Piazza electricity, which is shape-changing in response to electric field. And that was in 1880. So the family of smart materials, been around for a long time, but we've really been thinking of them as such for, I guess, 150 years or so.

I really didn't think you were going to pull out the 4,000 year mark on me there. I think something that's really interesting there is you were talking about the pine cone and its forms in the, I guess, the natural world. Is that where I guess some of our inspiration of these things has come from, seeing what happens in the natural world and learning from that? Oh, absolutely, yeah. The fields, what you're describing, sometimes called biomimicry, bio being nature and mimic, you know, to copy.

Really, really hot topic in material science and engineering at the moment, which makes sense, right? Because, you know, we're often looking to sustainable material systems as a way of being more sustainable ourselves. And of course, nature is the ultimate sustainable system. It's got a completely circular economy, if you like, all designed to be broken down and made into new things. And smart materials are no different.

And so absolutely the field of biomimicry, is massively influential in terms of not only developing new smart materials, but also developing new designs to use them in. And what are the challenges once you actually start developing and using these smart materials? Is there any problems once you're trying to actually put them out into the world or even when you're just trying to put them together? I think the biggest challenge, the materials themselves, although they are smart, are relatively simple and their function is relatively simple.

You can quite quickly define how much moisture do you need in this piece of material to make it swell by X amount. That's a sort of relatively simple engineering relationship. The difficulty and the challenge is actually once you've got this material that can sort of flip-flop between these two different states, how do you design with that? How do you build useful devices or structures that will use that amazing property to its best effect? So particularly in my experience as a researcher in this area, the materials themselves were relatively easy to come up with and characterize, but it was the design and the collaboration with designers that I found the most challenging. And I assume there's also this question of blending those two worlds of where you have

this smart material and you have this amazing property, but then you've got to find a way to use it in such a way that is both aesthetically pleasing but also productive in its use. Yeah, absolutely. And that's, I suppose, we're big teams of designers, architects in the built environment, clothing designers, you know, all sorts of people that work in areas that use materials. We as material scientists have to collaborate very closely with them if we want to see our stuff get out of the lab and be applied out there in the real world. And when we're talking about smart materials, how do you see, I guess, their impact on society in the future as this kind of thing becomes more widespread, more used, more integrated in the world

that we live in. I think as with any new technology, probably the costs will start quite high. So initially, we may only be able to buy this stuff. You know, it will only be available to the more wealthy in society who will initially get those benefits. But that being said, there are some smart materials, for example, those that are self-healing, like I've mentioned, or those that are able to prevent corrosion and rusting from happening, that could really see, I'm thinking particularly of spending and local councils who have to deal with potholes and the roads and damage to bridges and buildings from corrosion, those sorts of things, if we're able to make those areas smart,

that could actually see a huge amount of money being saved that we're not having to maintain infrastructure so much. So potentially that money could be diverted into other services, etc., which could, you know, greatly impact all in society. And I think thinking further afield as well at a global scale, sometimes the biggest impacts with these sorts of new technologies could be seen in the developing world, particularly where the impacts of, for example, climate change might be felt strongest.

Smart materials that are able to automate temperature regulation in buildings, for example, could massively benefit people in those areas. I mean, you won me over at fixing potterholes, if I'm honest, that was all I needed. You mentioned just there about countries where, you know, there's questions around the increase in heat or, I guess, changes in temperature, how you're trying to live down the line. Could you go into a little bit more detail about how we could use smart materials to address some of those issues, you know, climate change, energy, sustainability, that kind of thing. There are so many areas that smart materials could really, really help with this. One of my favourites is such a simple idea, which is colour-changing roof tiles, which they respond to temperature.

So when the roof tile is very warm and the sun is beating down on it, and generally in those circumstances, we inside the building want to remain cool. In that instance, the roof tiles turn a light colour and light colours reflect more of the sun's heat energy away from the building, so to keep the inside of it cool. Conversely, when those tiles get colder again, they change colour to become darker, which is more absorbing, which can then transmit some of that heat into the building. So just by changing colour in response to temperature outside, those tiles are able to better regulate the inside temperature of the building without having to put the heating on and without having to put the air conditioning on as well.

So a really nice example of it happening completely automatically. We don't have to do anything inside the building for that regulation. to happen. There's similar materials that you can put inside buildings, which are called phase-changing materials, that do something similar, except they melt and freeze and give out or take in heat through that process. So again, they sort of help to regulate temperature without us having to lift a finger or put energy into it. It's peak pollination season, and my business is scaling fast. To keep the nectar flowing, I need a phone plan with top priority data speed. That's why I chose GoogleFi Wireless.

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and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio, and Trocool. With over 100 years of combined expertise, name and focal have been bringing music to listeners just as the artist intended. Since day one, this mantra has shaped every innovation in hi-fi design, technology and acoustic engineering,

balancing craftsmanship and tradition with pioneering thinking. Name audio pushes cutting-edge technology to ensure digital precision whilst sustaining Pratt, pace, rhythm and timing, the elusive quality that makes music feel alive and gives it a emotional texture. Today, in partnership with French acoustic specialist's focal, name audio creates systems that deliver exceptional sound and unforgettable listening experiences at home. Try it for yourself at a focal powered by name boutique. Visit focal powered by name.com for more information. I think for a lot of the things that come under smart materials,

there's maybe this assumption that they're these incredibly complicated things, you know, borderline James Bond gadget kind of things. It's intricate, it's hard, it's complex. But hearing you talk about it, a lot of this stuff is actually very simple in its nature. I think it can be, yeah. If you look at the example of the pine cone spine, that's just two layers of wood that have different expanding properties when they get wet. So when the spine itself gets wet, one side expands more than the other, and so it causes that motion. That's such a simple and elegant design. It's made of the same material even. So that's the kind of perfect example of what we should be trying to mimic in our materials and our designs. And it's absolutely possible to do that

in lots of circumstances. When we're talking about these small materials and we're saying it in terms of helping one house or making a jump of someone or something like this, we're talking on quite a small scale. But what happens when you start to move out to a larger scale when you're talking about the huge building projects or making a clothing line for thousands of people. Does it get harder to produce these kind of things when you have to start looking at getting it done by a robot machine or in sort of more complicated factory lines? Definitely, although I don't think that problem is unique to smart materials. You know, we're talking about such, as we've said, a wide family of materials.

It's a little bit hard to generalise, but I think they would experience the same challenges of scaling up as all sorts of other industries as well. And I think something that I think is quite interesting within this field, specifically about, say, the use of smart materials and clothing, is that, you know, most people have huge wardrobe of clothes to fit, you know, all of the different situations here in England, you need, you know, a coat for six different seasons. Yeah.

And I wonder if, you know, there's this idea of smart materials. being able to help, you know, adjust to different seasons, different weather, to different ideas with less clothes, that you have one thing that can account for multiple different situations. Yeah, I absolutely love that idea, you know, one jacket for any temperature or season. I think that's, there's two sides to it, isn't there? You know, having fewer possessions means obviously less waste and less consumption. but if those possessions are much more complex than, let's say, a simple cotton jacket,

there's an argument to be made about the more complexity we put into objects, the harder they are actually to not only put together, but also deal with at the end of their life as well, to separate all of those smart materials out at the end of the life of that object. So it's a complicated one. It's funny because I was going to follow that. by asking you about the concept of recycling and upcycling the smart materials and how that works with, I guess I mean, clothing is the perfect example of that, like, what happens when

you're done with your coat that is more complex and put together in a different kind of way to the average material. Yeah, and I think that is a real key issue because these smart materials, they're not really that useful on their own. They only become useful when you combine them with other materials that aren't smart materials. And so I think inherently these smart clothes or smart objects will have to be made up of more different material components and be much more complex in their design. So to recycle that, we would need to separate out all of those individual material components again in order to be able to put that back into the material cycle, which it's not impossible, but it needs to be something that is thought about at the design stage, rather

than, you know, letting people deal with it later down the line. And often with the discussion of materials impact on them, on the environment, we look to the end result, you know, the consumer and how they're going to recycle it. But is there ways that we can look at, I guess, the production and the actual use of it in more of an environmental way and how we're making it at the start of the process that is more eco-friendly in that sense? Yeah, absolutely. I think that point of thinking about that full life cycle of the product from, you know, sourcing the raw materials all the way to what happens at the end of life, that needs to become much more of a sort of common design process, the thought process of we're going to make this thing, but how are we going to make sure that we can make it sustainably at every single stage of its lifetime. That's a shift that I do think is occurring much, much, much more. You know, there's the right to repair movement, which has gained massive traction

in lots of places all over the world, us trying to repair our stuff to keep it in our possession much, much longer. And manufacturers are also getting on board with this as well, because they're recognising that consumers are pushing for more sustainable and repairable products, and they will put their money where those sustainable credentials are. So it's absolutely a shift that's happening. I think it's really exciting, actually, to see that. we're talking mostly about in terms of the clothing using smart materials in a way that is I guess practical it's good for temperature regulation and all these sort of things but there's also I guess a lot of companies that are trying to reduce their carbon footprint by really think

about the materials they're using in their clothes what is more sustainable in that sense is that also somewhere we can be thinking about smart materials in the sense of how can you be getting less carbon-intensive materials into your products. One thing, though, that I think is a bit tricky for consumers is to actually understand which materials are better or worse for the environment in terms of their carbon intensity, carbon footprint, you know, water usage, use of toxic dyes. You know, there's so many factors around sustainability

that we as consumers are quite often not privy to. It can be really hard to make those choices. So the more designers and manufacturers are able to be transparent and honest about the materials that are going in there, the more I think consumers will be empowered to be able to make those choices. And I do think that smart materials will see a place in a more sustainable array of materials that we might have the choice of choosing in the future. It definitely does go along with that, you know, the idea of the right to repair, people are given more choice and more ability in their purchasing decisions on the things that they're using so frequently. Yeah, definitely. And you know, self-healing textiles, we haven't

mentioned yet, but they are, you know, the ultimate repairable textile. So we wouldn't even need the right to repair if our stuff would repair itself. I mean, that is a perfect thing to go on to is the idea of these self-healing clothes. Because I think especially for, I guess, the more durable clothes, people that are trying to, you know, the more out of the more out of the more outdoorsy people that are beating their clothes up a lot more. Self-healing clothes is kind of the perfect thing for them. Yeah, absolutely. I'm on a quest in my life to find my forever raincoat,

and I haven't found it yet. I thought I'd found it at Easter, and I went on a walk in the Lake District, and I ripped the pocket of it, my first wear. And I was so distraught, and had it been, you know, a self-healing textile, that wouldn't have been such an issue. So, yeah, I think it's an interesting,

Tension, isn't it? Because, you know, previous generations would have been much more literate in the skills of repair for textiles, for household objects, you know, cars, everything. I feel like we've lost a lot of that knowledge. And so maybe it's not so surprising that we are starting to invent materials that can automate things like repair for us, because many of us are increasingly automating lots of other areas of our life. It's a shame, though, if those skills, I think, are lost because our materials make us too complacent about being able to repair stuff as well. I think that's a really interesting point, really.

If we've become too reliant on smart materials, is that a problem where we forget these skills? I mean, that's already, I guess, something that's happening in other parts of our world, you know, people experiencing similar things with AI. and there's very much me who's now thinking about the idea of can I use AI to find my forever coat. I think it's very easy to push these tasks out once there's a replacement for it. Yeah, absolutely. It's a very interesting one, isn't it? And we can't guarantee in the future that those technologies will always be available to us, right? And so what happens then when we are

suddenly left without those important skills because we've been reliant on the technology too much? we've spoken a lot about the I guess the clothing side of things but one other area I want to touch on is in infrastructure because I'm curious what happens when you start to use smart materials in critical infrastructure and you start to implement them into you know these big buildings roads cities where there's a lot of linking parts that need to work together to, you know, a high standard for the safety of people where it is something very serious. Is there any risks there once you start using smart materials in that kind of world? Oh, that's an interesting question. I suppose any new technology is going to carry some uncertainties about its longevity, for example. You know, we can do tests

in the lab about how long something's going to last and over what stresses and strains it can tolerate. But if you put something in a building that you hope is going to last for 50 years, you can't do that test in a lab. You know, you just have to put it there and hope for the best. So I suppose there probably might be some teething problems in terms of how many cycles these materials can go through before their effects start to wear off maybe over time. What do we do about that? Maybe they'll need greater maintenance than their sort of non-smart material equivalent. Some of them can be just inherently kind of unstable or very delicate in their chemical makeup. So those sorts of details really of the materials would definitely have to be characterized

before we put them in something as important as, you know, a building or a bridge so that we know as much as we can that we can predict how those materials are going to last in the long run. So we've spoken about lots of different smart materials in different situations and kind of talked about what is the future, the current, the past. I'm just kind of curious what you see the future of smart materials to be. What is our interaction going forward of it? Do you see it to be something that appears in a few niche areas? do you see it as being quite a commonplace material in everything or nothing at all? I think I definitely do see smart materials becoming more of an everyday thing in our lives.

I think our current need to try to automate and make our lives easier, right, is a trend that I can't see going away anytime soon. And so the attraction of smart materials, I think, is definitely there in that. I think it's interesting what that says about us as a society and as humanity. I always like to think about what our materials say about us, you know, in a few hundred years' time when our Forever Jacket is sitting in a museum. And it has been self-healing for hundreds of years. You know, what will that say about us as a society? hopefully it will show that we are, you know, creative and good at making things thoughtful about our materials and our environment.

And I do think that smart materials will have a place in our future for sure. We just have to make sure that we're being mindful about not over-complicating objects unnecessarily and making sure that we're being responsible for the full life cycle of our stuff. I think what it will show is that we finally pan off for our over goats. That's what matters. Here's hoping. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius. That was Anna Proshisky, talking about smart materials.

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