Water-responsive materials exist everywhere in nature, but transforming these natural materials into sustainably sourced high energy engineered materials requires a fundamental understanding of how they work. Now a groundbreaking discovery by City College of New York researchers from the Grove School of Engineering unravels the connection between water and surfaces to engineer water responsive properties.
The experts, including chemical engineers Raymond Tu and Xi Chen, mechanical engineer Honghui Yu, and postdoctoral associate Darjan Podbevsek (power and process engineering), determined how water interacts with biomaterials at the molecular level to yield high energy density water responsiveness.
“We eventually aim to use these new high energy density materials to create a scalable alternative energy source. At a smaller scale, water responsive materials can be applied for robotics and smart textiles as well as bioelectronics,” said Tu.
Overall, these materials, commonly found in nature, have the potential to revolutionize a range of industries, from robotics and smart textiles to bioelectronics and clean energy generation systems.
The CCNY research continues with the team scaling up their work in a National Science Foundation-sponsored cross-disciplinary Convergence Accelerator. “We’re also working on using X-Rays with Brookhaven National Labs to understand the dynamic structural transitions that occurs when relative humidity changes,” Tu added.
“Water-responsive materials that respond to humidity changes are highly promising for use as actuators in robotics and for energy harvesting applications, yet we lack the theories to explain or predict the stress they generate,” said Chen.
The water-responsive materials study was published in the journal Nature Communications.
Research was conducted both at the Grove School and the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center located on the CCNY campus.
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Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided a high-quality and affordable education to generations of New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. CCNY embraces its position at the forefront of social change. It is ranked #1 by the Harvard-based Opportunity Insights out of 369 selective public colleges in the United States on the overall mobility index. This measure reflects both access and outcomes, representing the likelihood that a student at CCNY can move up two or more income quintiles. Education research organization Degree Choices ranks CCNY #1 nationally among universities for economic return on investment. In addition, the Center for World University Rankings places CCNY in the top 1.8% of universities worldwide in terms of academic excellence. Labor analytics firm Lightcast puts at $3.2 billion CCNY’s annual economic impact on the regional economy (5 boroughs and 5 adjacent counties) and quantifies the “for dollar” return on investment to students, taxpayers and society. At City College, more than 15,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in eight schools and divisions, driven by significant funded research, creativity and scholarship. In 2023, CCNY launched its most expansive fundraising campaign, ever. The campaign, titled “Doing Remarkable Things Together” seeks to bring the College’s Foundation to more than $1 billion in total assets in support of the College mission. CCNY is as diverse, dynamic and visionary as New York City itself. View CCNY Media Kit.
Jay Mwamba
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