University Park, Pennsylvania – Irena Potochny first picked up a needle to sew pimples on the felt in preschool, and she has not deposited crafts since. Now a student entering her last year at Penn State, Potochny spends her free time creating recycled clothes and tackling a myriad of projects, as in 3D printing her own spinning wheel for a weekend this spring semester.
In Penn State, the major in science and material engineering also found a way to weave their passions in research opportunities.
Potochny works with Robert Hickey, an associate professor of science and material engineering, to create hydrogel fibers that could one day lead to progress in smart clothes and even robotics and prostheses.
“I was really happy to find a teacher in the college who could understand what I wanted to do,” said Potochny. “All my material science teachers have been very favorable and useful to guide me to pursue textiles, even if we do not have this specific department.”
Hickey and his laboratory explore how hydrogel fibers can serve as actionors – materials that change or deform when an external force is applied, such as electricity used to open or close a part in a machine. Instead, the fibers react to heat or water, which makes them attractive like light and light versions of actuators, according to Hickey.
“We can make these fibers and stretch them up to five times their original length and let them dry and they keep this new shape,” said Potochny. “But when you reappear water or heat, they go back to their original length.”
Hydrogel fibers are made up of polymer material networks which can inflate and contain large amounts of water while maintaining their structure. Potochny and the team push the polymers out of the syringe in a rotation double boiler in a process called damp spinner, which creates long fibers mainly made of liquid and polymers, she said.
Potochny said it was interested in how fibers could be added to other textiles to create smart clothes or potentially things like self-assembled tents or self-infrannious floating devices.
“We experience to try to understand their applications in reactive textiles,” she said. “We are trying to see if we take it or brake it in a certain way, how it will affect the structure of the fiber and how it reacts to different environments.”