Heat Sensitive Polymers opens a new direction in the production of coatings and labels that change color with the temperature changed ...
Imagine that a fire door will have the ability to change color when it is hot, that football players wearing T-shirts that tell the coach when the player is too tired and out of breath, that the road itself automatically indicates the color of those areas which are covered with ice and slippery, or that the packaging of a sudden lose all their paint and discolor when they were stored at room temperature for too long, and their shelf life has expired. Fiction? Not any more.
At the University of Rhode Island, chemists Brett Lucht, Bill Euler and chemical engineer Otto Gregory are working to make these products a reality.
Scientists are developing a heat-sensitive polymers that change color depending on the temperature change. To date, they have successfully created a polymer which changes color from red to yellow at +82 | C (temperature at which a person would get burns), and other higher temperatures.
In the course of their activities one company interested in creating a new coating for cookware that will change its color when it is hot. This polymer has been created, but he broke up with him again, bringing to the high temperatures. But research in this area continued.
Have passed since the successful placement of the polymer in the plastic, from which it can not be removed. This discovery is important for the food and pharmaceutical industries and will develop a completely new type of packaging for the goods and medicines, which will change its color depending on the expiry date.
All that we have created to help protect people#39;s development from burns consumption of spoiled food and medicines, Lucht said. For example, packets could be milk mark which discolored if the packet is a long time at room temperature.
Funding for this project is provided by KM Scientific, URI Foundation and the URI Transportation Center, which develops applications for security of polymers. Polymers may be added to the set of different products, including plastic, paint, ink and rubber.
These technologies can be widely used in the automotive and car tires, which would be when heated in the sun would change automatically the color to a lighter rubber, thereby reducing the heating of tires on one side of the car and avoid the occurrence of a dramatic change in pressure in the chambers of the wheels on different sides machine. This is very important from the point of view of safety on the roads, where road transport is the most dangerous and disaster in the world.
Potential areas of use of these polymers are endless. It all depends on our imagination. In general, these products could warn people that they are potentially hazardous conditions.
Lucht Eiler now working to develop polymers that change color at low temperatures and which make a single color transformation from ideal temperature during hot red and blue at low temperatures. Other bright colors are also being developed by researchers. And Gregory has focused its work on search polymers evenly scattered throughout the material.
Contact information:
Todd McLeish, tmcleish@uri.edu, 401-874-7892, University of Rhode Island
