Researchers in the US have developed heat responsive crystalline cantilevers that are capable of lifting a metal ball almost 100 times heavier than the crystal itself.
Stimuli responsive behaviour in soft materials has blossomed in recent years, but for highly crystalline solids, such properties are still surprising, especially for materials that don’t lose their single crystalline nature in the process.
Source: Royal Society of Chemistry
Upon heating, the crystal lattice changes from herringbone packing to infinite 1D chains stacked co-facially along their π surfaces.
Jeremiah Gassensmith and colleagues at the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of North Texas, US, have developed single crystals of an N-substituted naphthalene diimide (NDI) derived organic semiconductor that can undergo a reversible phase change from its α to its β form under heating.
Read the full story by Jason Woolford on Chemistry World.
