Crikey! Convection Curls Clever Crystal Cantilever Contraption in Chem Comm!

Madushani Dharmarwardana and Raymond Welch have just published a paper in Chemical Communications showing thermal actuation in a single crystal. This is cool because the actuation is powered by a single-crystal to single-crystal phase transition (a monoclinic to triclinic phase transition) that accompanies an enormous change in unit cell. When glued to a glass plate, this anisotropic change causes the crystal to lift away from the heat. We show that the single crystals can lift almost 100 times their weight!

Also, check out the press release on the topic from UTD!