Intro­duc­ing nanopar­ti­cles in poly­mers pro­vides a spec­tac­u­lar improve­ment to their mechan­i­cal prop­er­ties. These results have already been observed and used and Fah­mi Bedoui, a research sci­en­tist with the UTC-Rober­val Lab­o­ra­to­ry and at the Cal­i­for­nia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy (Cal­tech) would like to bet­ter under­stand the phe­nom­e­na with a view to mod­el­ling them and pre­dict­ing their behaviours. 

It is one thing to “play” with nanopar­ti­cles to make new mate­ri­als but to bet­ter under­stand the phys­i­cal and mechan­i­cal prop­er­ties to pre­dict char­ac­ter­is­tics is anoth­er game alto­geth­er. This is what Fah­mi Bedoui, a research sci­en­tist at UTC-Rober­val Lab­o­ra­to­ry (and a spe­cial­ist in poly­mer mechan­i­cal behav­iour) has not­ed. “By adding nanopar­ti­cles to poly­mer struc­tures, their rigid­i­ty and resis­tance fac­tors can be mod­i­fied”, explains Fah­mi Bedoui but “we are inca­pable of under­stand­ing why or how these mechan­i­cal prop­er­ties change as a func­tion of the quan­ti­ties involved or the mate­ri­als involved”. And to study such assem­blies, it is nec­es­sary to explore the cross­roads between chem­istry, physics and mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing sciences. 

A model in molecular mechanics

Inas­much as the UTC-Rober­val Lab­o­ra­to­ry spe­cial­izes in mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing sci­ences, Fah­mi Bedoui looked up some for­mer col­leagues had met a cou­ple of years ago at the New Jer­sey Cen­ter for Bio­ma­te­ri­als, USA. Cur­rent­ly hold­ing posi­tions at the pres­ti­gious Cal­i­for­nia Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy (Cal­tech), these mate­r­i­al physics experts are devel­op­ing a mod­el in mol­e­c­u­lar mechan­ics that could be used to explore the nano-doped mate­ri­als and relat­ed ques­tions. Fah­mi Bedoui first went, in 2009, to the Cal­tech Mate­ri­als and Process Sim­u­la­tion Cen­ter as a vis­it­ing research sci­en­tist, and is now an asso­ciate sci­en­tist at Caltech. 

Understanding and predicting nano-reinforced material behaviour

The objec­tive assigned to our research is to bet­ter under­stand what takes place at a mol­e­c­u­lar scale when nanopar­ti­cles are used as addi­tives, to assess the ben­e­fits of using them to rein­force poly­mer matri­ces”, explains our spe­cial­ist of mol­e­c­u­lar mechan­ics mod­els. A very wild range of appli­ca­tions can be envis­aged to replace com­pos­ites: in sec­tors such as auto­mo­biles, aero­nau­tics, aero-space and even in cer­tain med­ical fields. The col­lab­o­ra­tion between the UTC-Rober­val — spe­cialised in mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing sci­ences and the Mate­ri­als and Process Sim­u­la­tion Cen­ter (Cal­tech-MPSC), brings togeth­er ‘pure physi­cists’ and can be seen as a reward­ing com­bi­na­tion lead­ing poten­tial­ly to pre­dic­tive mod­els to explain the behav­iour­al pat­terns of nano-rein­forced materials. 

“At this time, there is no spe­cif­ic agree­ment between Cal­tech and UTC”, empha­sizes Fah­mi Bedoui and col­lab­o­ra­tion cur­rent­ly relies exclu­sive­ly on sci­en­tist-to-sci­en­tist research work and exchanges. A part­ner­ship should be planned for at least 2 years to finalise the two ongo­ing projects. Fah­mi Bedoui envis­ages oth­er forms of col­lab­o­ra­tion, giv­en that “there is no lack of viable, joint research top­ics”, he adds. Col­lab­o­ra­tion among research sci­en­tists does not pre­clude hav­ing a more for­mal col­lab­o­ra­tive agree­ment. The Cal­tech mod­el is not so dif­fer­ent from that at UTC and an offi­cial agree­ment would sure­ly open up prospects for PhD stu­dents and young sci­en­tists to trav­el, exchange and work between the two institutions.