ARCHITERIALS

Nth Degree Makes Flat, Flexible, Printed LED Lights

2012-02-28T18:12:18Z

I’m starting to worry that I’m turning into an ostrich.

I’m territorial and ill-tempered. I’m fighting a strange desire to eat shiny objects. And when I get scared, I find myself hiding my face as though not seeing whatever is scaring me will make it go away. And this may or may not be related: I’m developing a strong aversion to light bulbs.

Image courtesy http://www.ostrichheadinsand.com/

A company called Nth Degree Tech may be able to help me out with that last problem. They’re seeking to replace light bulbs with their first commercial product, a two foot by four foot LED light sheet that’s flat and looks like a glowing piece of paper, which they plan to ship to customers for evaluation by the end of the year (Bullis). This is an exciting development, since it would allow lighting designers to get freaky with curved or unusually shaped light-emitting surfaces – at a price point comparable to the current cost of fluorescent light bulbs and fixtures.

Image courtesy Nth Degree Tech

To make their snazzy new lighting material, Nth Degree workers carve up “a wafer of gallium nitride to produce millions of tiny LEDs—one four-inch wafer yields about eight million of them. The LEDs are then mixed with resin and binders, and a standard screen printer is used to deposit the resulting ‘ink’ over a large surface” (Bullis). They toss down a layer of silver ink for the back electrical contact, add a layer of phosphors that alter the color of the light emitted by the LEDs from blue to various shades of white, and then they slap on an insulating layer that prevents those pesky short circuits that can burn out the LEDs.

The front electrical contact is made with an ink containing invisibly small metal wires, which makes it transparent and allows light through the layer. The transparent electrical contact ALONE could be the subject of an entire article, since it’s unspeakably awesome. Its awesomeness derives from the fact that it may eventually replace the brittle and often testy indium tin oxide (ITO) sheets that have been used in touch screens and electroluminescent assemblies in the past. ITO can be expensive, it can’t be printed and it’s not at all flexible – it deserves to be made redundant.

Image courtesy Nth Degree Tech

While printing with inks that are comprised of “tiny working LEDs produces much brighter light than depositing powders or thin films of electroluminescent material,” Nth Degree’s light sheets don’t match the best LEDs available today, which emit over 200 Lumens per watt. The sheets are better than incandescent lights in terms of efficiency, emitting 20 lumens per watt, but they’re not as good as fluorescent lights just yet, which emit 80 lumens per watt (Bullis).

The new design won’t require heat sinks the way current conventional LEDs do because the lights are distributed evenly and in a thin layer, meaning that they do not get hot. The downside is that the tiny LEDs need a pretty robust power source and as a result, Nth Degree’s first light fixture will be two inches thick despite the fact that the light-emitting surface is thin and flexible (Bullis). I’m not letting that ruffle my feathers, however, since I’m betting that the whole assembly will get thinner over time.

WU XING:

Filed under FIRE because it lights up!

Cited:

Bullis, Kevin. “Lighting Sheets Made of Tiny LEDs” Technology Review Online. 10/28/11. Accessed 02/24/12. URL.

A Glue That Sniffs up Pollution!

2012-02-28T18:12:44Z

I feel quite strongly that pollution is an evil and nefarious menace; it kills plants and animals, probably causes cancer, and coats everything on your street-facing balcony with a layer of dark brown powdery sludge that means you have to toss heavy buckets of water over your white metal patio furniture anytime you have guests over. I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about.

1952 | London Smog – Image courtesy ptkeepcalmcarryon.blogspot.com

Anyway – as I mentioned, I am deeply opposed to pollution in many of its forms, and I’m thinking of founding a formal opposition group to host regular meetings following strict Parliamentary procedure. The formal opposition group will commit ourselves as a first order of business to obtaining some newfangled “pollution glue” aka “dust suppressant” that the city of London is planning to spray on “15 separate stretches of road in areas with especially bad air quality” in order to trap pollutants (Price). If left unchecked, these polluting particles will get sucked into the lungs of innocent bystanders in the widespread and perfectly understandable habit of breathing. This must be stopped.

The pollution glue is a non-toxic, biodegradable, saline solution with calcium magnesium acetate. Converted winter service trucks will spray it on the streets of London at night like so many machine-like dogs marking so many road-like fire hydrants. The glue will have to be reapplied frequently since rain has a tendency to wash the solution away into drains and traffic wears it off the surface of the street.

Image courtesy nj.gov

The dust suppressant can’t trap carbon monoxide or other gas-based pollutants, but it will make it easier to breathe the air around central London: preliminary tests showed a 10-14% reduction in particulate matter with a diameter of 10 micrometers or smaller (Price). The city is in a rush to improve urban air quality because London faces steep fines for violating PM-10 limits set by the European Union.

When I heard about pollution glue, I was all excited because it seems brilliant and tidy to trap nasty particles before we inhale them. Not only that, I thought, the glue is non-toxic so it won’t harm the environment. But then I realized that anything that traps industrial particulates (even if the material itself is not made of nasty chemicals) will essentially become extremely toxic as it rounds up pollutants – and so instead of breathing in evil dust, Londoners may simply be allowing it to run into their watershed in a more concentrated form.

And perhaps more fundamentally, the glue does nothing to discourage industry from emitting the particulates in the first place. What do you think?

WU XING:

I’m filing pollution glue under Fire because fire makes smoke and particles and I sense that pollution glue would be fond of it.

Cited:

Price, Andrew. “A ‘Pollution Glue’ Gets Sticky with Pollution, Improves Air Quality.” fastcoexist.com 01/11/12. Accessed 1/12/12. URL.

Radiant Light Film: Learning to Make Rainbows from Butterflies

2012-01-23T16:46:01Z

Sometimes the beginning of the year is a little bit … well … boring. Everyone is working out at the gym and eating healthy green foods, and even though the sun still sets at an ungodly hour, all the festive holiday parties are over. This admirably disciplined January attitude is great for working off all the pfeffernüsse you shoved in your face and chased with rum-laced egg nog at your Aunt Betty’s house in December, but if you’re not careful all of this new-found rigidity and focus could negatively affect your work. So if you’re looking to spice up your latest facade design and hey – maybe even your life in general this month, then take a gander at this intriguing “multi-layer, polymeric reflective film that reflects 95%+ of visible light” and that can be used to create snazzy chrome-like, multicolored, and metallic effects in plastics (Source: Inventables.com).

Image courtesy UT Materials Lab & 3M

Radiant light film contains no metal whatsoever, so it’s non-corroding, thermally stable, non-conductive, and won’t produce electro-magnetic interference; it’s a well-mannered material that manages to create a striking effect with a minimum of fuss. Taking a cue from butterfly wings, the colors in the film are created NOT through the use of pigments but rather through a series of microscopic ridges spaced a few hundred nanometers apart. Variations in the spacing of the ridges produce a range of colors (blue to magenta to gold) though the reflection and interference of different wavelengths of light, and as a result the material appears to change hue as you adjust your viewing angle.

Radiant light film is nothing if not versatile: it can be “embossed, die cut, sheet slit, precision cut, surface treated, dyed, coated to be heat sealed, coated with adhesive, printed and extruded into plastics. It can be combined with suitable color substrates to produce various vibrant colors in both reflection and transmission” (Inventables.com). Hell – you can even turn the stuff into yarn and knit it into a sweater if you’re so inclined, according to manufacturer, 3M.

UN Studio’s La Defense, Almere

Technology: 3M Radiant Colour/Light Film.
Using radiant colour film to create interference colour.

So far the film has found applications in home décor, packaging, automotive trim and accents, computers, mobile phones and advertising media, and inspired by UN Studio, I think we should wrap some buildings with it. And then let’s go have some cookies because we all knew I’d never make it to March let alone 2013 on this ridiculous salad-filled healthy diet and I’m sore from doing pushups.

WU XING

I have filed Radiant Light film under Water and Wood. It’s flexible, reflective, and it interviews well.

Get Radiant Light Film from Inventables.

Not Quite Coral: A New Type of Cement Made from CO2 and Water

2012-01-10T15:44:05Z

When I was a small and intensely young person, my parents would drive me down the California coastline to a town called Carmel near Monterrey Bay, where we would hang out on the beach and frolic amongst the slowly rotting kelp and aggressive sea gulls, eat burgers at Flaherty’s Seafood Restaurant (which specializes in seafood, not land food – I was five), and weave in and out of various art galleries until we were tired enough to return to our hotel and fall asleep.

Image courtesy citi-data.com

One time down in Carmel we saw an elephant seal carcass that had washed up on the beach, and on another occasion we passed two wealthy teenage girls furtively snorting cocaine out of a makeup compact as the sun set over the waves.

When I think about Monterrey, I tend to remember those childhood trips or to think about giant kelp and playful otters; coral reefs don’t immediately spring to mind. But Stanford University biomineralization expert Brent Constantz is working to change that with a new demonstration plant in the Bay that works just like a coral reef … but that manufactures cement.

Image courtesy sophiarogge.blogspot.com

Though tiny, “corals are the master builders of the animal kingdom. Powered on plankton and their symbiotic algae, hard corals extract the carbon dissolved in seawater and turn it into their calcium carbonate skeletons” (Guy). These skeletons build up on each other on a massive scale over time, creating rich habitat for diverse sea life that reminds me of what happens when we build cities out of concrete.

Image courtesy Calera.com

Constantz saw the opportunity to learn from nature and developed a coral-inspired cement manufacturing process. Cement manufacturing is a massive source of carbon emissions: in fact, “the cement industry is responsible for 5% of global carbon emissions, with each ton of cement producing a ton of CO2” (Guy). Constantz’s company, Calera, aims to green the production of cement by “capturing flue gases from factories, running them through a saline solution, and using electricity to convert the gases into solids. For 542 million years, corals have been sequestering carbon dissolved in water” (Guy). Calera is looking to reduce the time scale for sequestering carbon dioxide gas that could be affecting our climate.

WU XING:

I have filed this coral-like material under Earth and Water; connect the dots!

Cited:

Earthsky.org “Making Cement the Way Coral Does: Out of Thin Air.” Fastcompany.com Accessed 12/08/11. URL.

Guy, Allison. “Growing Cement like Coral.” NextNature.com 05/12/11. Accessed 12/08/11. URL.

Q&A Special: How to Bend Bamboo

2011-12-27T22:50:40Z

Every once in a while someone sends me a materials-related question and I get to sit at a local wing joint on a rainy day, my non-typing hand covered in piquant buffalo sauce and stringy, ranch-coated celery fragments, watching multiple football games simultaneously while happily dispensing advice on subjects about which I may or may not have any expertise … and it is glorious. In the interest of sharing knowledge and offering a forum for people with actual experience and/or information concerning the question to contribute what they know (which I hope you’ll do in the comments section) please allow me to present a recent query and answer for your infotainment:

Dear Alli,

We are students of product design and are interested in knowing about the methodology used in bending bamboo or lamboo for shaping.

Can you pls how this is done–is it by air pressure or water pressure or by direct heating?

Saroj
India

Hi Saroj,

Although it’s technically a grass, bamboo acts a lot like wood, in that it performs well in tension and it’s fibrous and fast-growing. And just as with its arboreal cousin, people bend bamboo in order to make furniture, walking canes, or perhaps they bend it for more complicated reasons such as in order to feel capable of imposing their will on the natural world. And from what I can tell, all of these bending operations, whether the object of your deformation is a piece of plywood or a length of bamboo, require the application of heat.

Image courtesy made-in-china.com

While I have seen people steam the bamboo or apply heated, wet rags then bend and clamp it into position once the material has absorbed enough moisture to become pliable, I think it’s also possible to just blast the stuff with a blowtorch. (I found a highly instructive video of a craftsman in Mexico bending bamboo using said tool, upon which I plan to base this advice). I’ll include the video but for those of you on YouTube restriction, here’s how it’s done:

First, the bamboo is rotated rapidly and heated with a blowtorch that the craftsman moves continuously, allowing him to apply heat to the entire length of the bamboo stalk without scorching it. He polishes the stalk with a rag then applies heat a second time, as though to lock in the polish.

Next, one end of the stalk gets sealed off and the hollow tube is filled with sand. I think the sand acts like a flexible internal reinforcing for the bamboo as it bends, preventing it from splitting, checking, or creasing as it bends. The sealed end is placed in a clamp, whereupon more fast-moving blowtorch heat gets applied as the craftsman bends the stalk into position.

After the bamboo has cooled, he is able to unstopper the ends and drain the sand out; and BAM! that craftsman has himself a perfectly curved piece of bamboo.

Lamboo, a material I have written about before, which is basically glu-lam made from bamboo, can also be bent, although I’d imagine that the process depends on the characteristics of the resin involved in the manufacture of the material, as well as how it’s configured etc.

There is also Bendywood, a sort of permanently flexible, slightly dehydrated wood product. I’m not sure if similar techniques could be applied to bamboo but it would be fun to try!

Saroj, I hope that this answers your question or that it at least provides some content for other informed people to disagree with or correct in the comments!

Sincerely,

Alli

WU XING:

I have filed this Q&A Special under WOOD because that is where I always file bamboo. HAH!

Solid Poetry: Patterns Revealed in Concrete When Wet

2011-12-05T15:04:28Z

The grass is always greener – except when it doesn’t rain appreciably for three straight months, as was the case this summer where I live in Texas. Here, the grass was golden brown, parched, dessicated and crunchy like a stale sugar cookie or gauze belonging to a dried out ancient Egyptian mummy. As summer wore on, I found myself desperately squinting up at the blazing blue sky, searching in vain for the faintest hint of cloud formation. We were facing the kind of heat that makes standing on black pavement completely unbearable; the asphalt melts rubber shoe soles and causes low level leg hair to spontaneously combust. As I watched the tree leaves bake to brown and tumble end over end to the ground in defeat, I wished more than anything for rain.

Image courtesy http://howlinghooligan.blogspot.com

I imagine that in places like Seattle, or the Netherlands, where Frederik Molenschot and Susanne Happle developed a new water-activated concrete product they call Solid Poetry, people don’t stand around hoping for rain because the odds are good that it’s already falling from the sky. And now that it’s raining again in Texas, I can see many more applications for this innovative, delightful smart material. When dry, Solid Poetry appears dull and chalky – indistinguishable from standard concrete. But just add water and suddenly hidden decorative floral and leaf patterns appear, lingering only as long as the moisture level at the surface of the concrete remains high.

Images courtesy www.studiomolen.nl

Happle came up with the idea while on a walk, where she observed leaves blow off of wet pavement leaving an inverted shadow image of lighter concrete behind. She writes:

“Whenever the weather changes the landscape transforms; the light becomes different and the whole atmosphere changes. All materials seem to alter. In my project I explore the possibilities for hidden design appearing as the environment changes. I applied techniques to enduring and solid materials as glass and concrete, so that natural processes like differences in temperature causing condense reveal patterns on windows. Rain uncovers decoration on a city square. The possible applications of solid poetry are various: either at home in the bathroom, in the garden, in saunas and dance clubs, where the humidity is high or public spaces like bus stops or pavements. All forms of solid poetry have in common that they change the whole setting; they are surprising and have a life of their own.”

If you’re like me, now that you’ve heard about Solid Poetry you’ll spend more than a few minutes doodling custom patterns for use in a dream bathroom. But while custom and cast-in place patterns are possible with the system, the prefab repeating modules are what allows Solid Poetry to scale as a mass-produced, store-ready proposition ripe for commercial distribution. To learn more, treat yourself to this short video:

WU XING:

I am filing Solid Poetry under earth because it’s concrete and water because that’s the reason the concrete goes all magic and mystical.

Cited:

“Beautiful Concrete by Solid Poetry” Ronamag. 11/08/11. Accessed 11/29/11. URL.

The Lightest Material in the Entire World

2011-11-29T22:23:29Z

Things are heavy right now, man. People are fighting wars, Wall Street is occupied, a large percentage of the workforce can’t find jobs, airport security procedures intensify in complexity by the minute, the rainforest is shrinking as I type … and that’s just the tip of the rapidly melting iceberg. So if you’re already feeling like Atlas with the weight of the world on your shoulders, you’ll be glad to find out that scientists recently invented a material so lightweight it makes styrofoam seem as heavy as a lead ingot.

In fact, “with a density of just 0.9 mg/cm3 the material is around 100 times lighter than Styrofoam and lighter than … ‘multiwalled carbon nanotube (MCNT) aerogel’ – also dubbed ‘frozen smoke’ – with a density of 4 mg/cm3” (Quick). Learn more about aerogels here.

Researchers at UC Irvine, HRL Laboratories and Caltech created an “ultralight metallic microlattice,” which, due to its nanoscale structural configuration vaguely reminiscent of the Eiffel tower, which consists 99.9% of air. The scientists claim that it is the lightest material on earth. To make the material, researchers fabricated “a lattice of interconnected hollow tubes with a wall thickness 1,000 times thinner than a human hair” (Netburn). It’s so unbelievably light that the researchers made a version out of nickel, placed it on top of a dandelion and … nothing happened; check it – the stalk didn’t even bend:

Photo: Ultralight metallic microlattice — which is 99.9% air — is so light that it can sit atop dandelion fluff without damaging it. Credit: Dan Little / HRL Laboratories

So how, aside from dandelion decoration, might we use an ultralight metallic microlattice? The new material demonstrates impressive strength and energy absorption, with the ability to recover from compression exceeding 50% strain. The small wall thickness-to-diameter ratio of the material allows the individual tubes to remain flexible and absorb energy (Quick). The microlattice demonstrates potential for awesomeness across a wide range of applications. It could be used for catalyst supports, acoustic dampening, as impact protection, vibration dampening, in the aerospace industry, possibly in airplanes to save weight and corresponding jet fuel, bike helmets, or maybe even battery electrodes.

I’d like to know if the manufacturing process is scalable, if it’s toxic in any way, what the cost is to make the material, and if its performance decays over time. But it’s exciting to think about the possibilities – and to imagine little ultralight metallic microlattice samples floating delicately to earth like so many swan feathers floating on the breeze.

WU XING:

The lightest material on earth has been filed … in earth (and metal).

Cited:

Netburn, Deborah. “Scientists Invent Lightest Material on Earth. What Now?” Los Angeles Times online. 11/17/11. Accessed 11/21/11. URL.

Quick, Darren. “Newly Developed Metallic ‘Microlattice’ Material is World’s Lightest.” Gizmag.com. 11/17/11. Accessed 11/21/11. URL.

Special thanks to @BBQSnob for the tip.

New Fully Stretchable OLED Will Make You Crave Taffy

2011-11-21T18:50:43Z

Yesterday I bent over in the attempt to tie the absurdly bright purple shoe laces on my almost offensively bright purple sneakers and made a startling discovery: I’m not as flexible as I used to be. In fact, the overwhelming tightness of my hamstrings makes your standard British upper lip look positively floppy; and as I fired up my smartphone to schedule some emergency yoga I was reminded that I had yet to share an amazing new fully stretchable OLED display recently developed at the University of California, Los Angeles, a place where they know a thing or two about screens.

OLEDs or Organic Light-Emitting Diodes are great technology for screens primarily because they work without a backlight and can display deep black levels for high contrast. OLED displays can be manufactured thinner and lighter than liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and “in low ambient light conditions such as dark rooms an OLED screen can achieve a higher contrast ratio than an LCD, whether the LCD uses either cold cathode fluorescent lamps or the more recently developed LED backlight. Due to their low thermal conductivity, they typically emit less light per area than inorganic LEDs” (Source: Wikipedia). What it all boils down to is that OLEDs are the bees knees. FACT.

Image courtesy wired.com

Once researchers saw how thin they could make OLEDs it was only a matter of time before people starting thinking about how to make them flexible. Stretchable electronics open up a world where video displays get rolled up and stuffed in your pocket, electronic sheets drape like cloth, electronics grow and shrink on command, and the mighty condor gets taken off the endangered species list.

Early attempts at stretchable electronics resulted in prototypes that connected rigid LEDs with stretchable material and others that bent but couldn’t stretch. The challenge researchers faced was how to ensure that the electrode could maintain connectivity while being deformed since many conductive materials can’t stretch nearly as far as one might like. Enter the humble yet versatile carbon nanotube: it’s stretchable, conductive, appears transparent in thin layers, and it usually picks up the check after lunch dates.

The fly in the nanotube ointment, so to speak, is the fact that carbon nanotubes must be attached to a surface; the attachment can be tricky to pull off since when applied to a plastic backing nanotubes have a tendency to slide off or even slide past each other when the backing is stretched. To evict said proverbial fly from said proverbial ointment, the UCLA researchers created a carbon nanotube and polymer electrode layered on a stretchable, light-emitting plastic.

The researchers “coated carbon nanotubes onto a glass backing and added a liquid polymer that becomes solid yet stretchable when exposed to ultraviolet light. The polymer diffuses throughout the carbon nanotube network and dries to a flexible plastic that completely surrounds the network rather than just resting alongside it. Peeling the polymer-and-carbon-nanotube mix off of the glass yields a smooth, stretchable, transparent electrode” (Grifantini). I imagine that the carbon nanotubes embedded in the plastic stretch at roughly the same rate, and that the plastic keeps to itself mostly and doesn’t interfere with the ability of the nanotubes to conduct electricity.

Image courtesy pcworld.com

The team sandwiched two layers of carbon nanotube electrode around another plastic that emits light when current runs through it. Researchers obtained a laminator from a local office supply store to press the layered device together so that it could be handled safely in the presence of electric current. As an aside, we did the same thing when we screen printed an electroluminescent lamp in Switzerland this summer and were hoping to not get electroshocked by the circuits. (More on that soon). In contrast to our electroluminescent display, the flexible OLED created by the UCLA team can be stretched by as much as 45 percent while emitting a colored light.

Their prototype is a two-centimeter square that emits a one-centimeter square brilliant sky-blue light that stretches like silly putty until it loses conductivity due to being stretched too far or too many times (Grifantini). The researchers also made a prototype using silver nano wires (which are more conductive than nanotubes) that exhibits similar stretching properties but is even more conductive. Their layered approach is a great idea, not least because it’s easy to imagine how the process could be scaled up for production. Now if only those scientists could help me with my hamstrings….

WU XING:

I have filed stretchable OLEDs under Water, Wood and Fire because they’re flexible, stretchy, and they light up.

Cited:

Grifantini, Kristina. “The First Fully Stretchable OLED.” Techreview.com 08/26/11. Accessed 10/05/11. URL.

Watch video: Stretchable OLED – Tech Review

Paper Foam: It’s Foam … Made of Paper.

2011-11-10T20:34:11Z

There’s this place where I live called “Jimmy’s Food Store” and it is, as you might expect, a store where food is sold. But oh what food it is! Italian comestibles dripping with Italian deliciousness, sold with Italian gusto to Italians and non-Italians alike. At Jimmy’s Food Store you can get an Italian meatball sandwich that will bring tears to your eyes. You will literally be crying as you eat it because it is so tasty, and you’ll be crying after you’ve eaten it because you’ll be so sad it’s gone. I just started crying quietly at my desk just because I am thinking about it, actually.

If there is a drawback to Jimmy’s meatball sandwich (and please note that when I say drawback this is like pointing out that Miss Universe had on one too many fake eyelashes at the last pageant) it is that you receive it in a Styrofoam container. I remember learning that it takes something like nine billion years and a thermonuclear explosion for Styrofoam to break down and return to Earth, and that even as it does so it is poisoning things and wreaking havoc and stealing your purse at gunpoint. It is bad stuff. And even if you accept the fact that it has some good points (is a cheap insulating material that basically lasts forever) the Styrofoam containers at Jimmy’s are evil because they MAKE THE SANDWICH A LITTLE BIT SOGGY IF YOU DON’T OPEN IT RIGHT AWAY.

Image courtesy ecolect.net

I starting thinking about this while eating lunch at Jimmy’s last week because I had come across information about PaperFoam, which is an injection-molded cellulose fiber-based packaging material. Paper foam is itself made from recycled paper, and its properties are similar to thin Styrofoam or pulp in packaging applications. According to Ecolect, “the product is extremely lightweight which lowers the transportation costs, and consumers can discard [it] with paper recycling or in the trash as it easily biodegrades… PaperFoam CD packaging, for example, has an 85% lower carbon footprint compared to traditional, plastic jewel-case CD packaging.” The product is produced in the Netherlands, Denmark, the United States and Malaysia.

So I am thinking that Jimmy’s needs to develop a PaperFoam extra special vented meatball sandwich container. It would be biodegradable, prevent the sandwich from getting soggy, and keep it warm at the same time due to its insulating properties. And for those of you wondering how this is relevant to architecture – you can’t build anything on an empty stomach!

WU XING

I have filed this material under WOOD because it is made of tree fibers.

Cited:

“Check Out Paper Foam, an Amazing Material!” Ecolect.net. Accessed 10/5/11. URL.

Modern Super-Spies Like Bacterial Invisible Ink

2011-10-12T22:18:20Z

There wouldn’t be so many spy novels if there weren’t something so delightfully compelling about the idea of being a spy: you’re invited to imagine that your job is to sneak around in a trench coat and fedora, talking out of the side of your mouth and pretending to be something or someone you’re not in order to gather information on behalf of the resistance.

Knowing something you’re forbidden to know, or that other people want to know but don’t – or that other people don’t think you know, imparts a feeling of power and control that is like fresh, unadulterated catnip to a newborn kitten: heady stuff.

Image courtesy mike.shannonandmike.net

When I was younger I spent a lot of time writing cryptic messages in lemon juice on slips of computer paper – which at that time came in continuous sheets bordered by strips with holes and was divided by perforations for use in dot matrix printers. These messages could be passed with great stealth to friends in the school yard, who would then hold the paper over a heat source to reveal the messages. In the presence of heat, the acid in the lemon juice made the paper turn brown wherever it had been applied, thereby allowing dedicated ten year-olds to let each other know that someone had recently acquired a Barbie house.

I guess these days ten year-olds just text or email each other, which is great because it leaves more lemons for lemonade stands and other entrepreneurial activities. But I am pretty sure the researchers who developed SPAM grew up in a time where analog methods were used to exchange information. SPAM stands for “stenography by printed arrays of microbes” and it has nothing whatsoever to do with canned meat products. The idea is that messages are encoded in colors of glowing bacteria, and they can be unlocked with antibiotics.

Image courtesy wikimedia commons

People have been encoding secret messages in living molecules for a while, but SPAM is unique among these methods because it’s simple: it requires “no gene sequencing equipment, microscopes, or other scarce and expensive laboratory gear to extract the coded message. Some simple LEDs and a smartphone would suffice, allowing the recipient to receive the printed microbes through the mail and quickly and easily unlock the message” (Dillow). So maybe it’s a viable option for ten year-olds after all.

The research team inserted fluorescent proteins into seven different strains of the amazingly useful Escherichia coli bacteria, so that they would each glow in one of seven different colors under the right light. The engineered bacterial were then grown in sequences of paired dots that represented numbers or letters and imprinted on a sheet of nitrocellulose (Dillow). This meant that the message could be sent through the post like any other highly flammable piece of paper.

Image courtesy spam.com

The recipient of the message simply regrows the bacteria, places it under the right kind of light or exposes it to antibiotics, and BAM – the coded message reveals itself. The researchers were able to tune the bacteria to only express colors after a specific period of time, to respond to specific antibiotics and not others, and they even created a strain that would die off after a certain period of time. To put it another way: this means that the message could literally self destruct in five seconds, which makes me absurdly happy (possibly because I’ve watched a LOT of Mission: Impossible over the years.

Although this messaging system is as cool as a tiger frolicking in the cool waters of a river in Southeast Asia, there are some issues: for one thing, a finite number of antibiotics presently exist in the world so messages could be decoded by a straightforward process of trial and error. The researchers behind the technology aren’t troubled by this limitation because they’re less interested in spy drama than you’d expect: “they’re more interested in developing new ways to watermark genetically modified organisms with ‘biological barcodes’ to protect intellectual property and make the world safer for modified life” (Dillow).

I was disappointed to learn that the bacteria are essentially a glowing copyright notice, but the fact remains that this development is rife with potential. In fact, I’m not going to say how I know this but I just found out that someone very close to you recently acquired a Barbie house.

WU XING:

I am filing super-spy bacterial invisible ink under water and earth.

Cited:

Dillow, Clay. “By Encoding Messages in Glowing Proteins, Scientists Turn E. Coli Into Invisible Ink.” Popsci.com 09/27/11. Accessed 10/05/11. URL.