Through miracle of nanotechnologic breakthroughs, the small has become big. Call it whatever you like: philosophers stone, material of materials, limbo rock, or more likely metal rubber. It delivers more than it promises.

Background

Metal Rubber began as a postgraduate study on electrostatic films and layers done by Chinese born resident of Virginia Tech University, Yang Jin Liu. When the professor responsible for the project failed to receive a tenure, he was then transferred to the head of research Dr Rick Claus.

Admittedly Dr. Claus had his reservations about taking on another student into his program, but when Mr. Liu convinced him that 99% of the materials he needed could be found in a normal house and showed him how these materials self assemble from a jumbled up solution by simply a dipping process, things started to get interesting. All of a sudden any sort of base material such as a thin sheet of glass, gold, platinum, plastic, or anything, can gain additional unusual properties, just dip-rinse-repeat or add a different layer for extra flavor. Of these, the most practical with the most carrying power to be useful as a support material for a multitude of other products is metal rubber.

Ever since the initial wave of discovery Mr. Liu has cofounded the small company that develops such materials calling it Nanosonic. Mr. Liu left Dr Claus in charge and now they are contracting with Lockheed-Martin to develop its potential. In order to get the masses used to the idea, Nanosonic has taken the initiative by providing nanotechnology kits to high school students for just under 100$.

Properties

Just as the name implies, metal rubber has exactly the properties of metal and rubber, so it is so much more useful in that respect. Not only is metal rubber conductive, it can act like a battery, it can do the things a normal semiconductor does, it can withstand heat, pressure, twisting, pulling, bending, is chemical resistant, and resistant to all sorts of abuse, as well as being naturally always able to remember its original state. The last is the most important property because it can be used as a tireless artificial muscle. Certain coatings can even prevent the immune system from attacking the foreign substance and allow it to cooperate with the body.

The process of how metal rubber is made is currently being perfected at Nanosonic labs. Although production of a single sheet of material would still take a day to unfold, it seems only natural that a machine processing the material in batch, washing and drying in a sort of laundry vat can eventually run spiels of mass produced and cheaply made metal rubber at the price and pace comparable to present day newspapers. Since metal rubber can also be environment friendly, it may even be a chief contender as a substitute or replacement for a new interactive newspaper medium.

Since Nanosonics advance with layering technology and nanoscale selfassembly of parts, which can be easily transferable to human scale model of events, there is now an open door to a whole new world of missing links. Materials can now look and react like never before. Also through the power of electrical manipulation, the tedious process of working piece by piece on nanoparts have been replaced by the grow technique, having the solution breed itself.

Applications

Previously nanotechnology and its potential spinoffs, quantum computing, and more humanlike thinking machines were little more than buzzwords, an aside from reality, now more of it is possible with the advent of metal rubber. Metal rubber is first of all nanoscale, and this means precision and efficiency, both of which are important in the computing industry. Because structure at the nanolevel is organized according to probabilistic order, it closer reflects reality, and perhaps our thinking brain. So by postulate it could simulate something like a primitive non-organic brain with ideal connections, because technically speaking metal conducts better than organic substances. Figuring out how the brain works is another matter, but if technology is sufficient then memory cards could literally be just that, and people might just carry an extra brain or two in their pockets.

Turning the discussion over to more recent developments, those other breakthroughs such as: electronic paper, bionic appendages, contacts with extra sensors, various skins for vehicles, planes, building, articles of clothing, environment friendly energy source, anything that needs to be flexible, lightweight, and cheap can all benefit from a metal rubber upgrade. Since metal rubber is "smart" it can be used to deflect light in otherwise not normal configurations, either to camouflage, avoid detection from radar, or vanish entirely from perspective. Its many coatings can make it extremely durable and depending on the material used transparent as well. In any case one only needs a sprinkling of metal filings to be conductive. And the filings can be configured into whatever kind of circuit one wants.

One potential major application of metal rubber is epaper. Electronic paper already exists today but only as a novelty item. Current researchers are working on organic substrates and displays, so it can be biodegradeable and cheap to produce as well. This problem could easily be solved by informing each of these scientists of current breakthrough technologies. As mentioned above metal rubber can be made of practically any base material plus layers of accumulatively smart coatings, therefore the entire epaper can be composed of the metal rubber core, with layers of cpu, layers of memory, layers of energy storage, layers of LCD screening, and whatever else the epaper needs. Since the layers are nanosize, its possible the epaper could look so much like normal paper that a person will only really need one sheet.

Articles on epaper surpass those of metal rubber and its practical uses are far too many to count. Perhaps metal rubber is one of those technologies which work best in the background behind more useful items such as epaper. Since epaper is one of the things metal rubber can be, once it is shaped, some of its potential functions are best discussed under the context of epaper. When combined with wireless technology, there becomes in essence basically eradio or more likely etv, and a subsequent loss of privacy due to paper thin undetectable cameras and illusion makers being everywhere. On the other hand people may just install blockers to prevent information overload and to only see what they want to see. In this regard, there is nothing to fear as something like this is already happening automatically in the brain through the process called rationalization.

References

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The Big Future of Nanotechnology. http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2005-04/2005-04-12-voa54.cfm?CFID=310960967&CFTOKEN=33506930

"Brain" to Control Swarms Of Nanotechnology Created. http://sparkingtech.com/tag/nano-brain/

Chemists Create Self-assembling Conductive Rubber. http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2007/0409-metal_rubber.htm

E-paper. http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid40_gci535038,00.html

Electronic Paper. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_paper

Electronic Reusable Paper. http://www2.parc.com/hsl/projects/gyricon/

The Future of Nanotechnology. http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/19961

Genuth, Iddo. The Future of Electronic Paper. http://www.tfot.info/articles/1000/the-future-of-electronic-paper.html

Lurie, Karen. Metal Rubber. http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?type=article&article_id=218392354

Media Articles. http://www.nanosonic.com/publicity/mediaarticles.html

Metal Rubber. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFF_b6VXfj4

New Nano-brain brings AI closer. http://blog.highposition.net/article/new-nano-brain-brings-ai-closer/45691

Research, Development and Commercialization Partners. http://www.nanosonic.com/research/research.html

What is an EPD? http://www.eink.com/technology/index.html

What is Metal Rubber. http://www.tech-faq.com/metal-rubber.shtml

Wilson, Ron. Electronic Paper. http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=51200446