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18-May-2001
Copyright 2001, Frost & Sullivan, New York, NY 10006
The Department of Defense (DOD) has awarded a $5 million grant to the University of Chicago to establish a new national center for space materials research. Over the next five years, researchers across the country will work together with the university to develop new polymers and coatings capable of withstanding both solar radiation and impacts with space debris.
The new center, to be called the Center for Materials Chemistry in the Space Environment, will employ gas-surface scattering instruments and powerful microscopes capable of monitoring material structure at the atomic level. Steven Sibener, professor of chemistry and director of the university's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, will lead the effort.
Outer space is an especially unpleasant environment for human-made materials. The same physical and chemical processes that produce lovely auroras at the North and South Poles can destroy the hull of a satellite or spacecraft.
And understanding how materials react, erode, and age in space is especially difficult, Sibener said, because various forces in the harsh chemical environment of low-earth orbit work in concert to form complex synergistic effects. Space materials must be able to resist the degrading effects of ultraviolet radiation, oxygen atoms, and swarms of electrons and other charged particles in the magnetosphere-all at the same time.
Luping Yu, professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago, will produce experimental polymer materials similar to those used in space. Currently, soft and lightweight polymers such as Teflon and Kapton-both trademarked by DuPont-are widely used in spacecraft design. To improve on such materials, Yu will try to synthesize polymers that resist multiple sources of corrosion in space. In theory, a polymer coated with a film of aluminum or some other metal could do the trick. When the metal encountered oxygen atoms in space, a layer of oxide could form, and that could protect the metal from further corrosion. At the same time, the oxide could conduct away electrons that may damage the material. More protective coatings might be developed in the form of diamond films or similar hard materials.
Sibener's other colleagues in this endeavor include John Tully of Yale University; George Schatz of Northwestern University; Dennis Jacobs of the University of Notre Dame; Barbara Garrison of Pennsylvania State University; and Timothy Minton of Montana State University. Other collaborators will come from NASA, U.S. Air Force Research Laboratories, and Boeing.
The $5 million grant comes from the Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative, a program designed by the DOD to address large and complex science and engineering problems that have potential for future military and civilian applications.
Details: Steven Sibener, Professor of Chemistry and Director, Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, University of Chicago, Research Institutes Building, Rm. 311, 5640 South Ellis Ave., Chicago, IL 60637. Phone: 773-702-7193. Fax: 773-702-5863. E-mail: s-sibener@uchicago.edu.
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