I saw an interesting but somewhat confusing research demonstration today: a researcher made a Rubik's Cube using gel material. This is what the Rubik's Cube looks like when it's turned:
What's so special about this Rubik's Cube? It is all based on the same gel material, no additional adhesive is used, and there is no connection structure in the middle of the general Rubik's Cube. Just stack 27 gel cubes together, and they can stick to each other without falling apart, and they can also rotate, and the colored patches attached to the surface of the gel cubes will not fall off.
The following is the assembly process of the gel cube:
The six sides of the small cube are respectively pasted with gel sheets with different fluorescent colors:
27 such small cubes are piled together:
So, what is this trying to explain?
actually demonstrates a self-healing gel material based on acylhydrazone bonds and aggregation-induced emission (AIE) technology for producing fluorescent colors. When such gel materials come into contact with each other, they will form covalent bonds and connections (acylhydrazone bonds) on the contact surface over time, and the gels will automatically stick together. With a short period of contact (1 hour), the adhesion is still weak and can be broken easily, while with a long period of contact (24 hours), they will stick together firmly.
(This is an illustration in the paper. Where the gels are in contact with each other, an acylhydrazone bond is formed to connect )
And this gel Rubik's Cube actually shows the different adhesion effects in short and long periods of time at the same time. The colored patches and gel squares were placed together for a long time, while the small squares were assembled into a Rubik's Cube and placed for a short time. Therefore, when the Rubik's Cube is turned, the small squares can still be separated from each other, and the colored patches on the surface will not fall off.
Of course, it is easy to cheat when trying to restore such a Rubik's Cube: it is also very easy to take off all the small squares one by one and reassemble them. In addition, if this Rubik's Cube is left for too long, it may not be able to be twisted...
This research paper with a very magical idea was published in Advanced
original link on Materials: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/adma.201902365
Source: Cool Science
Editor: Shiny
