Physics
World. Hello and welcome to the Physics World
Stories podcast.
I'm Andrew Lester, and this year is the
international year of glass. And June's Physics World
Magazine
is a special issue relating to the science
and technology
of glass.
So it will become as no surprise to
you to learn that this episode of the
Physics World Stories podcast
is all about glass, and for the most
part, about the uses of glass technology
in healthcare.
For many of us, we might not think
of glass beyond windows and the things that
we drink out of, but the International Year
of Glass is there to make us think
about it a bit more deeply. Think fiber
optics, mobile phone screens, solar cells.
When the Physics World magazine is full this
month of some fascinating
features and articles.
Not least one by James Dacey,
a journalist who, well, to be perfectly honest,
without whom this podcast would just sit on
my computer, which I'll remind you to look
at at the end of this podcast.
But first, here's Julian Jones,
professor of biomaterials
in the department of materials
at Imperial College London.
Yeah. Bioglass is a special type of glass.
And it's special because when you put it
in the body it sort of has special
powers. And that it starts to dissolve and
actually tells cells to get active
and produce new bone.
You put glass into the body
and it speaks to your body and tells
the bones what to do. That's not what
I thought glass did. It's more like it
sends out signals and the signals are quite
simple actually. They're just ions
that are naturally found in the body. So,
but if you put,
window glass in the body, assuming it was
clean,
the body would see it as a foreign
object and it would isolate it and start
to push it out.
And just like if it was a splinter
that
if you have a splinter that doesn't get
infected it will push itself out. A few
years ago
all bio materials were designed
or chosen in order to have the minimal
reaction from the body as possible.
So people were choosing
things like metals that were as corrosion resistant
as possible
like titanium or or even stainless steel. But
when you put those sort of nearly inert
materials in the body, they get isolated by
scar tissue and sealed off from the rest
of the body and eventually forced out. So
bioglass
was invented
in order to form a bond
to the host tissue.
So it's interesting story actually.
The the person who invented it was called
Larry Hench.
And he was on
a a at a conference as academics are
sometimes.
And he he got on the bus to
the conference dinner, and there was one seat
available and he sat down and started talking
to the,
to the person there. And he was an
army major, just come back from Vietnam.
He started talking to him. He thought, well,
this is no time like the present to
try and
promote his research and try and get some
money out of the US army because that's
where all the funds were in the US
back then for research.
So he started
talking about his work on electroceramics,
which were for radiation protection
and things like that. And the major actually
stopped him and said look I've just come
back from Vietnam.
I've heard enough of,
of things like this.
I've just seen
situations where we we have casualties in the
field
and while away from hospitals and while we
can save their lives we can't save their
limbs. You're talking about these materials for extreme
environments. Can't you design one that will
survive in the body?
And what he meant by that was, you
know, not be rejected.
So Harry Hensch took that as a challenge.
He went back to his lab and he
came up with biogloss.
It seems a bit of a funny thing
to come up with, bearing your mind. You
don't think about putting glass
in your body in order to fix bones.
But he was thinking of the idea of
something that can deliver
lots of calcium
and some phosphate
which is what our bone minerals are made
up with.
And it just so turned out that,
this bioglass, when it goes in the body,
it does release
calcium. It does release some phosphate.
And
they combine together to form
natural bone mineral,
And that's the way the body sort of
sees it as part of it, part of
the body rather than as a foreign object.
So that's the reason it bonds to bone
and that
that this actual sort of telling the cells
what to do
is more about
just these ions as they're coming out. So
the silica that comes out and the calcium.
They they tell the bone cells to get
active and produce new bone. How did he
make it? How do you make it? You
make it just like
how you would window glass, where you would
take some clean sand,
you take some,
sodium carbonate, you take some calcium carbonate, some
phosphate, and you mix these powders together. And
you just melt them down,
the temperature of lava and you pour it
out into some water and you get a
glass frit which you grind into
into particles.
And that's exactly how it's used
most commonly in clinical use. It's just a
white powder
that the surgeon will take and mix with
blood of a bone defect and press it
back into the defect. So it's literally a
granular glass powder.
The the surgeon would take a little sachet
a bit like a one of those UHT
milk sachets,
open it up and use the powder. They
probably mix some blood from the patient into
the sachet,
stir it up with a
with a spatula
and then literally push it into the hole
in bone
and it'll start doing its stuff, start dissolving.
The bone will start growing between the particles
because it's, it starts dissolving and starts biodegrading
it. It'll it'll go
within a certain period of time depending how
it's used usually within a year. Okay. I
mean you think about how,
you know a bone fracture fixes itself usually
within 6 weeks but no you wouldn't use
those for regular bone fractures is when you've
got big holes.
They need a bit more time to repair.
They need a framework to grow around. So,
yeah, they they degrade over time gradually. But,
over about a year is about right. Is
there a reason why it's glass rather than
rubber or plastic or something?
No. That's a good question. The reason it
works well as a in the form of
a glass now
is because
the glass network,
the silicon network makes up glass,
is great in that
and the ions like calcium
just sit in the glass network. And so
as the glass starts to dissolve it releases
the ions in in kind of in their
pure form. Whereas if you
took let's say you took a, a compound
containing calcium,
then there'd be other things attached to it.
I mean, calcium chloride or calcium carbonate or
you know, you haven't got sort of the
just the calcium ions on its own. So
the benefit of the glass is as it
dissolves, it releases the ions without anything else
attached to them. And the glass dissolves at
quite a useful rate. You can you can
decide how fast it degrees, but the original
bioglass is already pretty good in that sort
of releasing these ions over time. So it
sort of continually feeds the cells as they're
doing their repairing. How do you design
the rate at which it dissolves? Well, actually,
the one that's used most widely right now
is the one that Larry Hent invented right
in his lab on on the first day
of trying.
But you can change the the rate
of release of the ions and there's different
ways of doing that. You just can't change
the composition.
The beauty of a glass over something like
a ceramic is that you can have almost
any amount of silica and any amount of
calcium in there just by what you mix
together in the first place. But, but you
can do other things as well as just
changing the particle size
changes the the rate it degrades. Obviously, the
original
conversation was about
battlefields. Is it something that's that transportable? Could
it be taken into
war zones?
Yeah. It can go anywhere. It's just, you
know, a glass is pretty stable and,
until you get it wet in this case.
So as long as it stays dry in
its little container
then, yeah, it's got a great shelf life
and go anywhere.
I mean you you find it while it
was originally designed for
fixing
patients
and
and military personnel, it's now you can find
it in tubes of toothpaste
because it dissolves and releases as calcium and
phosphate and triggers mineralization.
Is it I mean, your teeth are made
of exactly the same stuff that bone's made
of. So if you you tap your teeth
that's a that is
a calcium phosphate
mineral.
It's actually more mineral on your teeth than
there is in the bones.
But the reason you have sensitive teeth
would be because you've got ways in which
the hot cold or whatever it is can
reach your
nerve cavities, which are underneath the enamel or
in usually the tubules in the dentine underneath
that go into your nerve cavity.
So if you, if you brush your teeth
with biogloss then releases calcium phosphate and mineralises
the teeth with natural,
natural mineral that's normally there on your teeth.
You brush your teeth in the toothpaste containing
biogloss and out comes the calcium, out comes
the phosphate, and and you get mineralization. So
that biogloss in toothpaste is certainly only in
a couple of brands. And not too long
ago, I broke my leg. There was no
mention of BioGlast then. I wondered how commonly
it's used in health care. Hospitals have access
to it.
It's not hugely
widely used in the UK.
It's used a lot in the US.
And
and actually Finland has a huge activity in
in treating patients with biogloss. And they've had
huge success
in a really important area which is
where you've got deep bone infections.
So it's called osteomyelitis
which is where you have bone infections sort
of in the marrow cavity.
And sometimes that doesn't respond to the antibiotics
we have available. So it's a very well
known problem. It's antimicrobial resistance.
So,
so what they did is they actually took
the bioglass and they they packed it into
the into these bone defects
where there was infection.
And the infection went away.
They they did
continue to administer antibiotics but these are things
that were
not going away under the usual course of
antibiotics. When you add bioglass into the mix
it did.
So why is that the UK not using
this?
I mean there are people in the UK
using it,
using the the conventional bioglass.
As to why it's not used more
you could say well the short story is
probably related to NHS purchasing.
The longer story goes back to the beginning
of when they started to commercialise BioGlas
and the fact that
it wasn't a great business success right at
the beginning.
They kind of
missed a few tricks
and the company that was first founded and
so things like other calcium phosphate ceramics started
getting momentum in the market
before BioGloss got a foothold. Even though the
first studies on BioGloss are done first and
and it's been proven
to work better later on. There's doubtless a
whole other podcast about how finance gets in
the way of health care. But let's get
back to the applications of bioglass. Well, the
really exciting one is there's a new product
just been released in the US
which
is in the form of cotton wool.
Right? I mean it's glass but it looks
like cotton wool.
So it's a very
highly fast dissolving
glass wall
and
it's for diabetic foot ulcers.
So or chronic wounds. And these are wounds
that don't heal
under usual treatment.
And they've had patients where they haven't they've
had these wounds open for more than a
year.
And they've even started getting infected and things
like that. And,
so what they do is they put they
sort of pack this cotton wool bioglass
into the hole of the patient,
into the wound, then put the dressing over
the top. And then 3 days later they
take the dressing off and the glasses dissolved.
They put a new new bit in and
put another dressing back on.
And within weeks it, the the wounds were
healed. They even,
they even managed to
heal
a racehorse that had a massive gash across
his chest
that they were about to put down and
they thought no hang on let's try it.
Wow. Let's try this first.
So that's quite a thing, that's quite a
thing. So what's your involvement in it? What
are you doing with it? I started working
with Larry Hench actually and he gave me
the mission
to create the 1st porous
bioglass scaffold
for bone regeneration. So it was
a instead of having this powder what surgeons
really want is a a sort of framework,
a three-dimensional framework that the cells can go
into
and attach to and start laying down the
building blocks of of the bone and then
it biodegrades over time.
So we successfully did that but the
the medical device companies
weren't so interested. They didn't feel it gave
enough of a
of a commercial
jump over just having regular butt glass.
So the surgeons wanted it but the the
sort of amount it would have cost to
get it to product,
the companies didn't think it was worth doing.
So
so then I realized right okay well we
need something
that's gonna be even more revolutionary
than that.
So,
started working on this idea of bouncy by
a glass.
So
there's nothing currently available to surgeons now
that can share load
with the host tissue. So there's no sort
of scaffolding or anything that they can put
in
that will take
or share load with the host bone.
So you have a big so at the
moment the biogloss is used in the holes
in bone generally not if there's a big
piece of bone missing. And one, there's a
big unmet clinical need for
bad trauma where,
they call it non union where the bones
don't go back together no matter what you
do to them basically.
So if we had
something with the
the power of bioglass
but that could share load with the with
the bones, with the with the bones that's
already there then it could be really revolutionary.
So we've been working on that and we've
managed to do it. And the fact that
we now have this,
material that has the the two properties, the
the stimulation of bone growth and the ability
to safely load.
And we do that through,
well, we make the scaffolds through 3 d
printing.
But the magic part of it is really
what they're made of. So in order to
get this mix of properties we had to
we have to grow the glass
through chemistry
and grow the polymer at the same time.
So that the glass network and the polymer
network actually grow together. So some people might
say well how's that different to a composite?
Because the composite is where you have you
might have your inorganic
or your glassy component and you might have
your,
matrix, a polymer matrix giving you flexibility.
So something like glass fibre composites or carbon
fibre composites.
The problem with that
for this medical application is that if you
imagine you've got your
bioactive
glass fibres or particles,
they're the things that the cells want to
interact with. If you embed them in a
in a polymer, in a plastic matrix then
they're not gonna see them.
So you might get some mechanical properties but
you're not gonna get your
your
bioactive properties
stimulation.
So So the idea of the hybrid is
that these these intimate relationships are so
finally interlocked that when the cells come along
and and attach to the surface they see
the bioglass and and the polymer at the
same time. So it literally bounces. If you
threw it on the table it would bounce.
Right? Yeah. It's just like a you know
a kid's power ball. You know little round
bouncy balls and you can bounce it on
the desk and it'll bounce around like that.
And so yeah, you can hit it with
a hammer.
You can even cut it in half and
stick it back together in a self heal.
Brilliant. Although unfortunately it doesn't self heal a
100%. It's only I mean it gets about
half of its strength back. But but it's
fun to watch. Yeah. I can imagine. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. But what is but there's obviously
there's there's no because it will dissolve. Right?
We couldn't use this for glass in windows.
That's right. No. I mean, you know, when
when we saw the self healing, we thought,
oh, mobile phone screens.
But, yeah, you don't really wanna buy degrading.
At least not one that degrades while you're
using it. No. I can think of some
companies that might like the idea of it
biodegrading, then you have to buy a new
one, but nothing then. Yeah. Biodegradable, if you
could press a button to make it biodegradable,
that'd be good. Yeah. That would be I've
had enough of it. Now I can biodegrade.
Yeah.
When are we gonna see bouncy
bio glass
being used?
I wish I knew the answer.
We're doing our best and
we do have some investment
in into the research group to accelerate its
translation.
So
soon but soon in medical devices is
not always
everyone's soon.
If a phone screen that biodegrades at the
touch of a button seems a little far
fetched right now, there's another thing that Julian's
team are working on that wouldn't feel out
of place on the pages of a science
fiction novel. So the biogloss nanoparticles because it
deliver the ions. They go inside the cell
delivering these active ions. Great thing about glass
is you can almost select any element from
the periodic table and put it in the
glass and
most of those people have found a therapeutic
benefit of
for example strontium
promotes bone growth and slows down the bone
resorption in osteoporosis.
Zinc kills cancer cells without killing the happy
cells.
And so we've been making some nanoparticles
made of biogloss.
And with the same ideas that they can
deliver these ions. So,
but with the benefit that they can deliver
these ions at a controlled rate.
So when there's 18 nanometers inside, they can
float around the body and they can,
taken up by cells and then they dissolve
inside the cells and release the body, release
those ions. While biogloss does have these amazing
properties that make it great at triggering biological
processes, there is still some risk of infection.
And the dream is bioactive
glass with antimicrobial
properties.
In researching for this podcast, I found a
paper whose lead author was Martina Mikalska.
We'll come to the paper shortly, but I'll
let her introduce herself. I'm for another week
a postdoctoral researcher in photonic innovations lab, at
University College London.
And starting the next week, I'll be, lecturer
in nanomanufacturing
in the new UCLA, East Campus. I don't
know if everyone knows,
about it, but this is, like, the biggest
extension
since the UCL has been founded. It's supposed
to bring researchers from different disciplines to work
together
as well as some, industrial partners
to also
facilitate,
work across sectors.
So the actually, what's nice about this, it's,
so the building I'm gonna be at, it's
called manufacturing futures lab. This is where we
share space with me coming from mechanical engineering
and other researchers from chemical, biochemical engineering,
and chemistry
to work together,
on addressing some of the big questions,
that we are dealing with at the moment.
My personal
interest,
is in,
finding new technologies to find the the growing
issue of antimicrobial resistance.
So my background is, I should maybe say,
is in chemical engineering,
as well
as in laboratory medicine.
So and I actually did my,
my PhD in physics on working on
quantum dots and to use those optical
fluorescent probes for breast cancer imaging. And
because,
I have this double double training,
what I've been practicing since then is really
working across disciplines and and doing really nanomaterial
engineering to address
health care related issues. But also I'm interested
in energy applications and how can we make
some passively
working technologies that without energy to
make buildings,
a bit cooler, for instance. And this is
how I got into the project that I'm
at now to work on,
smart windows,
that would exceed some multifunctional
character.
By this, I mean, will be glare free,
so to will be anti reflective
for a better
visual effects, but also would be self cleaning,
which is
a a big, big issue. And you think
about
tall buildings,
where there's some
cost analysis that it takes basically the cleaning
of such windows
within the first 5 years when the building
is built,
costs the same as, as,
actually installing those windows. So it's a big
issue.
And then, the third probably the most exciting
part is, to
regulate the amount of solar energy that comes
into the building depending on the temperature outside.
So,
say if it's cold, you let everything in,
but when it's hot, you would like to
reflect, stop that infrared coming into the building.
So this is this is where I came
into with my skills
to this project and to,
well, the paper that that you wanted to
discuss. I was talking to Martina in her
busy office at UCL,
University College London, and the office is in
the top floor
of the UCL building. And all around her
is the glass of the windows
which taper upwards. And if it wasn't for
the cityscape outside the windows, you could be
forgiven for thinking you were on a boat.
Anyway, that might explain some of the noises
you hear as the conversation goes on.
The paper is entitled bio inspired multifunctional
glass surfaces
through regenerative
secondary mask lithography.
Essentially, it's a paper about altering the surfaces
of glass for applications such as fending off
unwanted bacteria,
something that's especially important
in medical settings.
Yes. So this is the method that,
we've developed,
in order to,
enable
glass nanostructuring.
So I should start by saying that
although there is lots of things that is
made of glass, we have it in many
of the day,
products, like, when it comes to its,
structuring any kind mic micro nano structuring that
would induce some properties,
this is extremely difficult. And this is for
the reason that,
we have these lots of things from made
of glass because it's highly,
robust material,
in terms of, it's it's it has great
thermal stability
as well great, chemical stability.
And the same excellent,
properties of glassmakers,
very difficult to deal with.
So,
we knew that,
that by
nano patterning, so basically engraving in the glass
some nano arrays of particular geometries. Think about
nano cone or nano pillar,
that has,
say,
500 nanometers height and is on the pitch
even smaller than that, say, 100 nanometers, we
start to see some
great,
properties from the material like optical properties and
the reflective properties. So so there's a big
need to do that, and this is extremely
difficult. So we needed to think like,
yeah. Okay. So
how how to do it? And so there
was a need for a new method,
and,
myself and other researchers
came together,
to work out how to do it. So
the secondary mask lithography,
in order to pattern something, typically what we
do,
we use a mask.
So say
so what we basically did, we took some
polymer micelles,
that we just spin coated on on top
of the surface,
and this is very rapid. We're talking about
20 seconds, and the pattern with that nanoscale
resolution is there. But the the then once
we have this pattern where these mesolar bumps
create
create this
this this layout, we need to transfer that
into a glass. And this is what was
the problem because what we typically do, we
use some,
glass etching chemistry.
We do it,
typically in the clean room,
in a tool called reactive ion etcher. So
we we we have a chemicals,
that we ionize. We create a plasma that
then in a dry way,
edges the glass,
around the pattern. The trouble with this pattern
was that
because it's it's organic, it's polymer,
and it's only 20 nanometers
tall, so it's extremely
small,
it's it's not very,
durable. So that would allow you to to
get, say, 200 nanometer tall structures.
And so it happens that
that
this magnificent optical properties of,
of glass,
are they controlled by aspect ratio of the
features. So,
so
the, again, the idea was how do we
make it robust?
So we came up with a process,
that during the,
the etching itself, the chemistry works in a
way that there's lots of bioproducts.
And this bioproducts,
it's,
let's let's call it there is a sticky
polymer,
that,
we took an advantage
of,
and and it started to deposit
on that,
polymer micelle protecting it.
And and you can imagine that this is
chemically more chemically speaking, it's Teflon like structure.
And this is what,
what
fluorine that we use to etch glass doesn't
react with.
So we were able to protect the mask
and let the etching to progress.
So this is the secondary mask.
This is this is the mystery of the
secondary mask.
And and this elegant trick,
allowed us to to achieve what we wanted.
In order to showcase the potential of this,
Martina and her colleagues tailored some of these
glass features
to achieve omnidirectional
antireflectivity,
self cleaning, and unique antibacterial
activity
towards staphylococcus
aureus, a bacteria very commonly linked to upper
respiratory tract infections.
So first of all, I should say that,
by combination of
of different masking. So, say, we can tune
the the pitch, therefore, the spacing,
the center to center distance of the features.
And now with this method,
we can we can tune also the height
of the structures. Therefore,
you can have,
nano cones, you can have nano pillars, you
can have some nano pencils
on your,
on your glass, and that will, in different
ways, control
the interaction of glass with we talk a
lot about light, but they can also
control the interaction with,
water,
other liquids like oils,
and,
what I am particularly interested in, bacteria.
And, and this is quite cool.
So so we need this kind of,
this kind of level of control,
in order
to first,
fundamentally understand
how how these things operate because a lot
of phenomena,
are still,
under investigation,
to to then use that as a rational
design for specific applications.
So, so think about mobile display.
So,
while we we've all been experiencing
the consequences of pandemic,
and we've been, like, more now become more
sensitive to to disinfecting
and
to contamination that comes in the high touch
surfaces. And when you think about, like, display,
for instance,
the such structuring not only could give you
anti reflective properties and increase the transparency,
so which is also, by the way, independent
on on incident angles. So you can move
your object and and you can still read
what it's what it's written there.
But but you have to think also that
this optical properties will be preserved
only where, you know, like, that will be
dependent on the,
on the environment of use. So when you
put your fingers that have some oils and
other
contaminants
like bacteria,
then this proper the optical properties will be
affected. So there is a need for multifunctionality
clearly,
and,
this kind of structure can accommodate couple of
things at the same time. So obviously it
goes beyond this, but within health care settings,
it's there are plenty of applications. Oh, absolutely.
Absolute. Any surface actually,
and
at at hospital,
could be targeted. So especially
surgical sites, they are all made of different
type of materials that,
well, that we should maybe say that to
fix. 1 that do not allow to to
to to stick bacteria to them, so so
we have the repellent effect and the other
that kill in c 2. And I should
mention that these surfaces could be designed to
do, one thing or the other.
So that's quite cool.
But the beauty of it is that,
since this is physical method because we apply
physical forces. Imagine the the the nano spikes
that are order of magnitude
smaller than bacteria,
the typical bacteria. Bacteria
adhere to the to the surfaces and, and
then,
upon the induced forces, there is a mechanical
stress
on cells, and then they may be either
pierced or deform and ruptured,
or so much stress
will be induced that they will program themselves
to death.
And again, the beauty of this is that
you don't use any chemicals.
So we believe that,
since these surfaces
work through so many physical means that it
would be
evolutionary difficult
to overcome that and and,
and actually induce any antimicrobial resistance, which is
quite cool. How easy is that to replicate?
How how quickly could this be something that
we're seeing out out there in glass manufacturers
everywhere? Well, there are some,
startups and some, like, also,
well,
some companies that already are doing what's these
are called structures,
maybe on a smaller aspect ratio.
But,
things like this are are happening. And, actually,
as we speak, we are also collaborating,
with industrial partners like NSG Plukington,
here in the UK,
where we're looking how to bring these technologies,
as products,
into,
yeah, into the market.
Well, one thing is that,
that you can structure glass,
directly, but you can also look at the
roots to retrofit what exists. Because typically, we
we should mind that, you know, when we
when we install the windows, we don't want
to exchange that too often. Right? We're talking
about,
decades, if not longer,
of utilizing those. So but we can, so
so what we are working
on as well is how do you make
it maybe
in some,
polymers,
with the adhesive on the other side
and,
and trying to develop methods for that that
will be scalable.
So so, yeah, this is this is something
that's currently ongoing, and,
I've just come back from the conference
of material research society
where there's a lot of work about,
about scaling up the nano manufacturing because this
is also we're talking about wearable electronics
and,
other stuff like that.
And and and there's lots of discussion, ongoing
on
going into naninfinity geography, roll to roll, processes.
So this is something that
industry
is looking at and starting to pick up
on. So
so I think it should be,
it
should be fairly soon when we start seeing
stuff like that on the market. What are
you most excited about with this? Well, the
ability
of self disinfecting,
and
and protecting our
health and environment from this unwanted contaminations.
And
and that's that's definitely the closest to my
heart
as a as a trained diagnostician and material
engineer. Like, I I
I'm and I'm interested from, like, both sides
from material side. It's like there there are
still challenges. How do you structure
in a scalable ways materials,
but also from the bacteria side. Like, how
do they sense the the the the structures?
Like, like, how these interactions
are happening on molecular level.
So,
if you if you are able to understand
that, then we can take
this this even further.
And I may throw here some, like, exotic
studies
seems far fetched, but but actually you can
start start maybe
thinking about how to study evolution by using
this kind of structures or, like, some some
work on microbiome.
So when you think about,
well,
when you put some mixtures of cells on
on on such structures, they they they may
start to compete as as it happens, like,
in the environment.
And then,
you may have some nice
system to to look at in terms of
how the system evolves,
and, organizes itself. So,
and, and working on microbiome is another, like,
a huge
hugely grown field
in research. So I'm, like, really excited to
connect both ends. Yeah. That's really interesting, isn't
it? Oh, I saw we just,
you know, obviously, you've said you're UCL. You're
in London. It's a busy city. We just
heard a siren going past. Do you you
know, when you're walking around London, do you
look at the glass and sort of think
about the different aspects of it, or is
it just sink into the background like it
does for everyone? Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And especially now in the pandemic, like, you
can see it everywhere. You know? I was,
I was
doing the grocery shopping, and, you know, we
have all this
plastic dividers or, like, going to the bank
or, like, anywhere. And I can see, okay,
this has, like, lots of cracks. This looks
dirty.
And, and, you know, these are the places
where you would rather have something actually when
someone sneezes and that that bug, like, travels,
like, onto that surface,
like, you would like to actually induce kitting
and and and keep the surface clean. So
I can see totally,
like,
already, like, I'm actually probing for the application
of the technologies we are
developing. And and, and I have to see
say that there is a huge need definitely
for that. If you're interested in glassware in
pharmaceuticals,
you may have heard of Valor Glass, a
product designed by the company Corning
to prevent cracks and reduce contamination
in pharmaceutical packaging. This glass and other strengthened
glass products from different companies have been particularly
helpful in the last couple of years during
the pandemic because they can also withstand very
low temperatures
and strong impacts.
So these strong glasses have been used to
produce the vials that the life saving vaccines
have been carried in. Martinez suggested
another possible use of specialized glass, which might
be particularly useful for those of us who
aren't quite ready to give up the masks
yet.
At this scales,
well, we we all pretty familiar with the
effect of lotus leaf.
So we have some structuring that
that between the structures, the air is,
is entrapped and that,
basically,
helps to prevent water penetration into the bottom
of the structure. So we have this, this
this water that creates the the the little
balls that bounces off the structure.
So we have this,
and we can buy similar coatings now, like,
on Amazon
and spray it on our shoes or whatever
to have something,
very water repellent.
But when you do this kind of structuring
at this scale, you can also
induce
the repellency of the micro droplets, so like,
foking effects.
And we now all very familiar by when
wearing masks and our sunglasses,
How annoying it is
to look,
through the glasses and have all this condensation
happening. So guess what? The structures can also
prevent that, and
we we publish
a a a nice,
fun, like, lots of fundamental study on that
in in last year in nature communications with
a group,
that has been investigating the condensation phenomena for
for a long time, from Paris, the group
of professor.
So if anyone is interested, I also encourage
to look at that because it's, it's it's
quite cool to see how it can be
designed.
That's amazing. That makes me, makes me want
to get you to design some goggles for
me for diving.
Exactly.
The other night, I found myself in the
cinema watching everything everywhere
all at once.
I mentioned that because it was a very
busy cinema and I highly recommend that you
find time to go and see that film
if you haven't already.
But the idea of glasses
that don't steam up while you're wearing a
mask in a busy cinema seemed like a
very good invention to me. But glasses also
played some really important roles in the fight
against COVID 19,
And you can read about some of those
and a whole lot more in James Dacey's
article, a transparent tool for a fairer planet,
which you can find in the Physics World
Magazine
this June. For next month's podcast, we'll return
to particle physics as we celebrate
10
years since the discovery of the Higgs boson.
And thank you very much for listening.
Physics World.