Santa Claus Comes to Town in Nanocomposite Photo

4/9/2013 Written by Susan Mumm

Santa Claus made an early appearance in a photo AE Prof. Eric Loth’s research group produced recently. The photo won second place among 50 finalists in the Science as Art Competition at the Materials Research Society Spring Meeting in San Francisco.

Written by Written by Susan Mumm

Nano-Santa and his bag of nano-tubes: We found Nano-Santa on a superhydrophobic spray coating composed of siliconized fluoropolymer with CNT and Teflon filler particles.
Nano-Santa and his bag of nano-tubes: We found Nano-Santa on a superhydrophobic spray coating composed of siliconized fluoropolymer with CNT and Teflon filler particles.
Nano-Santa and his bag of nano-tubes: We found Nano-Santa on a superhydrophobic spray coating composed of siliconized fluoropolymer with CNT and Teflon filler particles.
Santa Claus made an early appearance in a photo AE Prof. Eric Loth’s research group produced recently. The photo won second place among 50 finalists in the Science as Art Competition at the Materials Research Society Spring Meeting in San Francisco.

Postdoctoral research associate Ilker Bayer said the photo is a scanning electron micrograph of a nanocomposite coating surface morphology. “It showed very interesting surface roughness features, one of which was the structure that resembles Santa amazingly,” Bayer said. “We just colored the image to highlight the resemblance. No image overlaying or other image processing was applied.”

“The polymer nanocomposite was composed of a dispersion of sub-micron Teflon particles and carbon nanotubes in a polymer matrix,” Bayer said.

In addition to Loth and Bayer, who originally recognized Santa, AE graduate student Adam Steele added the highlight color and has also been working on the project.


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This story was published April 9, 2013.