Scientists from Tel Aviv University have successfully produced a new type of glass that can bond instantly by touching water at room temperature while maintaining transparency.
The research was published in a peer-reviewed academic journal Nature.
The research, led by PhD student Gal Finkelstein-Zuta and Professor Ehud Gazit of the Shmunis School of Biomedicine and Cancer Research at the Faculty of Environment and the Institute of Materials Science and Engineering at TAU’s Faculty of Engineering, could dramatically change the sustainability and cost of tools in various industries. Most notably, the discovery could revolutionize optics and electro-optics, satellite communications, remote sensing, and biomedicine.
“In our lab, we study bio-convergence and specifically use the amazing properties of biology to produce innovative materials,” Professor Gazit explained. “Among other things, we study the sequences of amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. Amino acids and peptides have a natural tendency to combine with each other to form ordered structures with a defined periodic arrangement, but during research we discovered a unique peptide that behaves differently from anything we know: it did not form any ordered pattern, but an amorphous, disordered one that describes glass. “
How does glass work?
Liquid glass has very little order at the molecular level, but its mechanical properties remain fixed. While glass is usually produced by rapidly cooling heated materials and then freezing them in a glass crystallization process, TAU discovered that an aromatic peptide, which consists of a sequence of three tyrosines (YYY), forms molecular glass spontaneously after evaporation of an aqueous solution under room temperature conditions.
“The commercial glass we’re all familiar with is created by rapidly cooling molten materials, a process called vitrification,” said Gal Finkelstein-Zuta. “Amorphous liquid-like organization should be fixed before it arranges in a more energy-efficient manner as in crystals, and that requires energy – it should be heated to high temperatures and immediately cooled. On the other hand, the glass we discovered, which is made of biological building blocks, forms spontaneously at room temperature, without the need for energy such as high heat or pressure. Just dissolve the powder in water – just like making Kool-Aid – and the glass is formed. For example, we made lenses from our new glass. Instead of a lengthy grinding and polishing process, we simply dripped the drop onto the surface, where we control its curvature – and therefore its focus – just by adjusting the volume of the solution.”
“This is the first time anyone has succeeded in creating molecular glass under simple conditions,” said Professor Gazit, “but the properties of the glass we have created are no less important. It is a very special glass. It is very strong on the one hand and very transparent on the other – much more transparent than ordinary glass.
“The normal silicate glass we all know is transparent in the visible light region, the molecular glass we created is transparent deep into the infrared range. This has many applications in areas such as satellites, remote sensing, communications and optics.”
“It’s also a strong adhesive, it can bond different glasses together, and at the same time it can repair cracks that form in it. It’s a set of properties that no glass in the world has, that has great potential in science and engineering, and we’re all obtained from a single peptide – one small piece of protein.”