Weird New Substance Flows Like a Liquid Then Remembers Its Shape In Water

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/weird-substance-solid-liquid-2012-12

An awesome new metamaterial created by researchers at Cornell University can flow like a liquid  then when put in water it returns to its original shape.

A matematerial is a material that is man made and can not be found in nature.

Biologist and environmental engineer, Dan Luo, created this hydrogel using synthetic DNA. Single strands of DNA will lock onto other strands with a complimentary sequence, serving as a great building block for self assembling materials.

The hydrogel was created by using a mixture of synthetic DNA and a polymerase enzyme, which is what makes DNA chains longer and weaves them with other DNA strands.

"During this process they entangle, and the entanglement produces a 3-D network," Luo explained in a release from the university.

The researchers described their new substance as working like a rubber band, which has a shape but can be twisted, stretched, and deformed.

The material also has small empty spaces that can absorb water, and resembles a sponge. Because of this hydrogels may one day be used to deliver drugs slowly into patients as it degrades in the body.

The new hydrogel was published Dec. 2 in the journal Nature Nanotechology. An awesome video of the gel being hydrated and returned to its original shaped can be seen here.

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