Gemstone based metamaterial
Up to more general definition: Metamaterial
Simply by nanostructuring abundant elements they can (in the vast majority of cases) replace the scarce elements that are needed today. In fact the single element carbon suffices to replace almost all other materials.
A diamondoid metamaterial:
- 1) consists out of one or a few diamondoid base materials that means compounds that are suitable for advanced atomically precise technology
- 2) has a for the human senses unperceivably small structuring. This structuring is usually formed by complexly interlocking crystolecules and possibly microcomponents.
The structuring gives the resulting material properties that are not native to the base material. In fact the properties of the diamondoid metamaterial can be polar opposites of the diamondoid base material (given a good base material is choosen).
For instance: The base materials usually have gemstone properties but a metamaterial made from these base materials can behave like rubber for human perception. The them "gem-gum technology" sometimes used here on this wiki refers to that fact.
Since there is a hyper-gigantic space of possible structurings there's an equally sized space of novel (mechanical) material properties that range from simple improvements over uncommon/unfamiliar material properties to outright alien stuff.
Best of all this works with just one (or a few) diamondoid base materials that contain just one (or a few) abundant elements.
Thus gem-gum Technology has the potential to solve large parts of todays (2016) looming civilization problem of resource scarcity.
Contents
Diamondoid metamaterials as basis for advanced atomically precise gem-gum Products
Diamondoid metameterials form the necessary basis for the yet speculative advanced applications of the goal technology level.
These highly complex applications will only become possible through the smart combination of the set of newly available metamaterials with novel properties.
List of new materials / base technologies
The set of here presented meta-materials seems less speculative and more incomplete than the list of applications on the products page. It is sorted by design/programming effort which is rather subjective and subject to debate.
low effort
- simple standard macro diamondoid structural meta materials
- molecular filters
- macroscopic super-bearings (one can only see a speed gradient)
- anisotropic material properties (e.g. scissoring mechanisms material)
- data storage material and the like
medium effort
- artificial muscles with higher power densities than todays combustion engines. They can replace todays (2014) electrical motors that often use the not too abundant/accessible rare earth elements.
- absolutely silent (macro motionless) pumps a "pumping material" with no movable parts which are visible to the naked eye.
- cells for the direct conversion from mechanical to chemical energy and vice versa (chemomechanical converters).
- super-fast shearing valves
- material structuring into microcomponents for recycling and recomposition
- structures borrowed from origami techniques
- tensegrity structures.
- emulated color -- local control makes that a display, light emitting systems might be more heterogenous (lasers?)
- transformer metamaterials: purely mechanical pulse width modulation and other materials for energy conversion
- transparent cloth with switchable stiffening e.g. for a helemt of an AP suit (interspersed multifunction metamaterial?)
- density shifting via translocation of mass carriers (possibly carrying lead atoms in diamiondoid form)
high effort
- "elastic diamond" (made possible through the implementation as a semi active metamaterial)
- maximizing emulated toughness ("beefy" that is much volume occupying dissipation elements are needed - how far can be gone with active high power cooling ?)
- materials with choosable / adjustable stress-strain diagram (emulated elastoplasticity)
- actively self cleaning surfaces (no "stupid" lotus effect meant here) (macroscopic shell cleaning)
- self repairing materials and self repairing macroscopic machine parts - no decay through weather or root growth.
- combinations of several metamaterial properties that don't get too well together
- .... and many more
Robustness of AP microscale machine systems
- Natural background radiation won't hit a small part of a system for decades on average. Bigger systems can retain functionality reliably through redundancy.
- The digital nature of AP building blocks (copies have completely identical bond topology) makes them self correct their alignment in spite of thermal expansion. This allows for highly scalable system design. The same can be seen in digital electronics mechanical flaws up to 5% in length of chip structures and similar electrical flaws in voltage are self correcting.
- Effect of lack of defects - diaomond gum:
Substances that are normally very brittle can take enormous strain (in the two digit perecent range) when they're completely free of defects. With APM making completely defect free microscopic parts is easy. When those microscopic parts are combined back together in a smart way that prevents crack propagation (e.g. with interlocking shapes) this property can be retained into the macroscopic size range. See "emulated elasticity" for more details.
Lopsided volume ratio in metamaterial type usage
Due to the very high power densities (see here) that can be handled with diamondoid metamaterials metamaterials for energy conversion (motors/generators) and transmission (infinitesimal bearings,...) will in most cases only take up a small fraction of a products volume. Leaving space for simpler design, more other functionality (e.g. datastorage) or allowing for higly collapsible design that get their shape by inflation with pressurized air.
Comparisons
diamondoid metamaterials - vs - diamondoid compounds
Note that there is a grey zone between diamondoid compounds and diamondoid metamaterials where it might not be 100% clear in which class they belong. In this grey zone there live e.g. compounds that including vacancies that are distributed in a checkerboard pattern. Is this just a different crystal structure (another polymorph or neo-polymorph in an pseudo phase diagram) or just a metamaterial.
One could call these cases low level metamaterials. A short note on low level diamondoid metamaterials can be found on the page describing diamondoid materials.
Specialized diamondoid metamaterials - vs - general purpose utility fog
Utility fog could be considered a very complex high level metamaterial. But since it has the maximum possible degree of general purpose capabilities it is not optimized for any specific purpose.
Instead of going the general purpose route which takes high design effort. One can:
- use diamondoid metamaterials that are much simpler to design (and maybe simpler to build too)
- use complexity instead to highly optimize for one specific application (e.g. street pavings, medium movers, ...).
- do something in-between those two extremes
The limits of metamaterials
Some combinations of material properties are just not permitted by physical law and can thus not or only to a small degree emulated by metamaterials.
Examples for this are:
- non polarizing optical transparency of thick plates is incompatible to isotropic electric conductivity (TODO: check inhowfar true)
- very high thermal isolation conflicts with very high compressive material strength
Notes
Depending on the design of the APM nanofactory that assembles the diamondoid metamaterials (See: vacuum handling) they can be organized in microcomponents or be monolithic.
Wikipedia's older definitions for metamaterials in (2014) did not mention mechanical metamaterials. As of (2016) mechanical metamaterials seem to gain more attention. A short section about them (structural metamaterials) has been added. according to wikipedia
External links
Diamondoid metamaterials allows to reach spots in the Ashby plot (density vs tensile strength) that are not accessible by non AP means of production.
- Pictures of Ashby plots on wikimedia commons: saturated-pixelgraphic; vectorgraphic; a scan of a detailed version
- Wikipedia(de): Spezifische Festigkeit
