Research Techno Plaza

Day 3 (part 2)

Research Techno Plaza

The research

I have been to research techno plaza, where I've been introduced to biomimicry, where the research is mostly on learning from the most practiced one in the world - nature, which had million upon millions of years to practice. Part one of today's post is only on one single aspect of the research that they are doing.

When we run out of inspiration, the easiest thing to do is to take a look outside the window for them. Although these researchers have been looking everywhere, from the bottom of the ocean to their lunch table.

Some examples would be squids, totally organic, soft and squishy. Except for a single part of them: their beak. As PhD student Shahrouz Amini introduces to me, organic materials are usually soft, so what is special about the beak of squids is that they are extremely hard. Research are in progress to attempt to duplicate nature's work in a lab.

There are many other researches concerning animals that were taking place in the lab, mostly to study their properties, composition, and to attempt to duplicate them.

The equipment

I have been also introduced to a single equipment inside the lab, and even have the privillage of seeing a PhD student at work with it, and been given a detailed explaination on what it does and for what circumstances would you use the equipment.

TI 950 Tribolndenter



A closer view


Basically, what the Tribolndenter does is to test for the properties of a material on a microscopic scale, where the properties of the materials will be at its most "pure" form, unaffected by macro-defects.

Poster explaining its features



Closer view of poster (features)



Closer view of poster (applications)



First, an optical scope is used to search for the points of interest. This points are prepared beforehand using some other equipments not covered today. They are microscopic "pillars" of differing diameters. This process can be frustrating when you cannot find the spot which is required for testing.

When this pillars are located, a more detailed scan will be conducted on the pillar area by using a spherical-conical tip as the scanning probe.

This will scan an area of about 10 micrometers (the human hair is nearly twice as thick as the area scanned!) This procress is excruciatingly slow, where 5 minutes would produce probably only half of the full image! Luckily, when the pillars are observed, the scan can stop and there is no need for it to the full picture to be obtained.

When the pillars are located, the Tribolndenter will be programmed to make an indentation on the pillar, so that the properties of the material can be found, usually plotted on a stress-strain graph. The indentations can be programmed of a force of up to 10N over any period of time.

A plot of the stress-strain graph is then given, where the properties of the materials can be analysed.

This piece of equipment is very accurate, and will scan the specimen very precisely (propably the reason it takes so long)

The scanning of the sample

During the scanning, there were lots of time to explain to me the details of the what she was testing for, and why it would exhibit these properties, as well as that thermodynamics can explain many things that occurs.

 But as all research goes, not everything goes according to theory. The first 3 or so pillars that were tested broke during the scanning, such that the experiment could not carry on. The rest went rather nicely, where the samples could be indented to test their properties.