NewScientist.com news service
A new Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies was created on Wednesday at MIT, with a US Army grant of $50 million over five years. The institute has a remit to produce fabrics that can morph to improve camouflage, stiffen to provide splints for broken limbs and store energy that can be tapped later to increase the wearer's strength.
Ned Thomas of MIT's Department of Materials Science says many existing nanotechnologies already have the potential to be scaled up into full suits of armour. "Our goal is to help greatly enhance the protection and survival of the infantry soldier using nanoscience," he says.
One example could be weaving fabrics out of nanoscale hollow fibres that Thomas hopes to fill with an existing technology called a ferrofluid. Ferrofluids contain magnetic particles that can be made to align in rows forming a stiff gel when exposed to an external magnetic field.
"We know lots of injuries are made worse by people trying to move someone," says Thomas, "Doctors say this could be an on-demand splint."
Another idea is to interweave existing organic polymers that change the way they reflect light in response to mechanical strains or applied electric fields. Thomas says these could be combined with a micromechanical sensor array and used to reproduce the light that would pass through if the soldier was not there, creating an effect approaching invisibility.
Artificial muscles
Novel protective materials and communications devices for foot soldiers have so far been a mixed blessing - the average US foot soldier now carries around 64 kilograms (140 pounds) of armour and equipment into battle.
In December 2001, US army bosses said they wanted to lighten this burden by redesigning the equipment from the atomic scale up. This led to the funding for the new institute.
Thomas says concerns that soldiers would have to carry a generator to power their new smart suits are not justified. Artificial muscles under development at MIT can exploit mechanical stresses to store energy rather like a capacitor does.
As well as powering smart components of the suit, Thomas hopes to use these in a boot design. "You might be able to store power when you run and then use it to jump over a wall," he says.
Eugenie Samuel