The Liquid Revolution

Researchers in the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology Faculty of Mechanical Engineering have developed a new material expected to spark a revolution in several applications, including energy harvesting, storage, and transport, as well as cooling and heat pumps. The article was published in Materials Today Physics.

The material developed by Professor Amir Gat and doctoral student Ezra Ben-Abu is a mechanical metafluid.

Metamaterials are unique materials that exhibit properties not found in nature, which is why they attract such great interest. They are artificial structures made of basic units arranged periodically, and they respond in different ways to mechanical loads, giving them special macroscopic behaviors, i.e. ones that differ from those of standard materials. These materials allow unprecedented control over optical, acoustic, and thermal fields.

Most of these materials are solid structures, and the  Technion researchers’ innovation lies in creating a liquid metamaterial. Although such fluids have been developed before, their performance has been extremely limited. The technology developed by the Technion team, however, enables precise control over the behavior of these fluids using time-varying magnetic fields. This makes it possible to dynamically control the flow rate of the liquid, an applied discovery relevant to many aspects of the energy world.

Control of the fluid was achieved using magnetic capsules suspended within it. These capsules contain gas and respond to the changing magnetic fields applied to them.

The researchers developed a prototype demonstrating the feasibility of their model, which allows control over the fluid’s motion and compressibility.

“With the technology we’ve developed, it will be possible to leverage metafluids for many applications that involve movement, compression, and expansion of their fundamental units,” said Prof. Gat. “This technology transforms metafluid research from a theoretical concept into a real engineering application, with broad technological potential in critical areas such as cooling systems, heat pumps, energy harvesting, energy storage, and energy transport.”