Future of Nanocomposites

Abstract

Combining materials of dissimilar properties and finding successful commonalities is as old as cooking, heated vegetables that can be bland, spicy or completely different are well known. The world of metallurgy, glass making and building materials have all gone through developments where the sum of the parts is greater than the components. The notion of amalgamating two or more dissimilar materials into a resulting composite material has been studied extensively. Dating back as early as 3100 B.C., Early Dynastic Period Egyptians practiced blending straw pieces with mud to form structurally reinforced masonry units for construction.1 Beyond what is well known as doping in semiconductors that have made Intel, Microsoft, every cell phone manufacturer daily names we are now beginning to see an emergence of new forms of doping in the form of nanocomposites. Such composite materials are generally comprised of a filler and a host matrix. The filler ordinarily imparts desirable properties and functionality to the resultant composite system while the host matrix provides a compatible structural framework that effortlessly blends well with the filler but adds new properties what is well known as a bland material. Afterall, who would have thought that adding nanotubes to conjugated and non-conjugated plastics could have such an effect ohmically or to the EM spectrum. This paper explores some of the composites that are appearing as well as now well-known bionanomanufacturing of rare earth materials, some of what have been patented here at the Universityof Houston.