{"id":180227,"date":"2017-06-18T21:21:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-19T02:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/06\/18\/neat-tech\/"},"modified":"2017-06-18T21:21:00","modified_gmt":"2017-06-19T02:21:00","slug":"neat-tech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/06\/18\/neat-tech\/","title":{"rendered":"Neat Tech"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The good folks at the Air Force Research Laboratory have been working <a href=\"http:\/\/www.janes.com\/article\/71435\/afrl-explores-the-use-of-liquid-metal-to-reconfigure-radar\">on a radar that uses liquid metal to allow for on the fly reconfiguration<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">The US Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) is building antennas using liquid metal to enable changes to the size, shape, and functionality of the electrical wiring.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Currently, the research effort is using gallium, which is known for its use in radars (gallium arsenide and gallium nitride types) and sensors.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">&#8220;What we are doing here is using the gallium as a metal itself,&#8221; Christopher Tabor, materials research scientist, AFRL, told Jane&#8217;s at the US Department of Defense (DoD) Lab Day, held on 18 May at the Pentagon in Washington, DC.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">&#8220;Gallium by itself melts at about 87\u00b0 Fahrenheit [30.5\u00b0 Celsius]. If you blend in materials like Indium it becomes a eutectic alloy that will melt at much lower temperatures,&#8221; Tabor said. &#8220;So this is a conductive fluid below room temperature.&#8221;<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Pre-designed channels inside structural composites are filled with liquid metal to produce an embedded, physically reconfigurable antenna, according to AFRL.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>We are all familiar with liquid metals, as the liquid metal in &#8220;Mercury&#8221; thermometers is now the alloy <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Galinstan\">Galinstan<\/a>, an alloy of Gallium, Indium, and Tin, and is a liquid from around between -19\u00b0 and 1300\u00b0C.<\/p>\n<p>The theory here is that you could have a series of channels and valves (or perhaps fluidic controls) that would allow a radar to change its shape dynamically, which would eliminate the need for actuators found in more conventional radars.<\/p>\n<p>I call this neat stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The good folks at the Air Force Research Laboratory have been working on a radar that uses liquid metal to allow for on the fly reconfiguration: The US Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) is building antennas using liquid metal to enable changes to the size, shape, and functionality of the electrical wiring. Currently, the research &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[379,427,382],"class_list":["post-180227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-military","tag-science","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180227"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180227\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}