Nanotechnology - Enabling Safer Body Armour for Real Life
The threat posed by global terrorism, at home and abroad, often means that police and army personnel, journalists reporting from war zones and civilian rescue workers have to wear body armour capable of stopping high velocity projectiles such as bullets and bomb shrapnel.
Integral body armour has evolved a long way since the 1960s when the ability of alumina ceramics to withstand bullet impacts was discovered. Modern armour is now much more sophisticated, using advanced materials such as Kevlar and glass fibres together with ceramic and carbon epoxy. The current armour can take multiple hits, provides good fire and smoke resistance and has low toxicity characteristics, a vast improvement on that of the 1960s. However, modern armour generally relies on a ceramic layer to take almost all of the ballistic impact. The use of such materials compromises the weight and flexibility of armour in the field.
Research conducted by the CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory, Liverpool University, Tuskegee University (Alabama, USA) and Florida Atlantic University (USA) has validated the possibility of utilising nanotechnology in the design of new materials which will ultimately enable the production of flexible light-weight body armour.
When materials such as Nylon 6, polyethylene, Polypropylene or Epoxy matrices are infused with spherical SiO2 nanoparticles, or multi-walled carbon nanotubes, the new nanocomposite material produced has significantly improved structural strength. For example, the tensile strength of Nylon 6 infused with carbon nanotubes, compared to Nylon 6 alone, was 220% higher1. Ballistic testing of sandwiched composites, made from polyurethane foam dispersed with TiO2 nanoparticles, at Tuskegee University, has shown that embedded nanoparticles successfully offer resistance to high-speed projectiles.
Although nanocomposites appear to offer improved structural and ballistic characteristics, the bonding involved between the core material molecules and the nanoparticles is unknown. Researchers are currently discovering the complex structure of the new materials through the CCLRC’s high resolution X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy facility at the National Centre for Electron Spectroscopy and Surface Analysis and the low energy beamline 6.1 at the CCLRC Synchrotron Radiation Source. Although still in development, these new materials are already catching the attention of security services and promise to have wide-ranging potential for protecting society, both at home and abroad.
This research is being funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the US National Science Foundation.
- H. Mahafuz et al, Applied Physics Letters, 88 (2006) 83119
Dr. Graham Beamson 
g.beamson@dl.ac.uk
Dr.
Vinod Dhanak vin@liverpool.ac.uk
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