Fluorescent tetrapod quantum dots or tQDs (brown) serve as stress probes that allow precise measurement of polymer fiber tensile strength with minimal impact on mechanical properties. Inserts show relaxed tQDs (upper) and stressed tQDs (lower).
Fluorescent tetrapod nanocrystals could light the way to the future design of stronger polymer nanocomposites. A team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has developed an advanced opto-mechanical sensing technique based on tetrapod quantum dots that allows precise measurement of the tensile strength of polymer fibers with minimal impact on the fiber's mechanical properties. In a study led by Paul Alivisatos, Berkeley Lab director and the Larry and Diane Bock Professor of Nanotechnology at the University of California (UC) Berkeley, the research team incorporated into polymer fibers a population of tetrapod quantum dots (tQDs) consisting of a cadmium-selenide (CdSe) core and four cadmium sulfide (CdS) arms. The tQDs were incorporated into the polymer fibers via electrospinning, among today's leading techniques for processing polymers, in which a large electric field is applied to droplets of polymer solution to create microand nano-sized fibers. This is the first known application of electrospinning to tQDs. "The electrospinning process allowed us to put an enormous amount of tQDs, up to 20-percent by weight, into the fibers with minimal effects on the polymer's bulk mechanical properties," Alivisatos says. "The tQDs are capable of fluorescently monitoring not only simple uniaxial stress, but stress relaxation and behavior under cyclic varying loads.
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