The fibres are "immersed" in a polymer matrix and the cracks typically appear at the polymer/fibre interface. I'm endlessly fascinated by the ability we have to see matter evolving at such a small scale - truly a microscopy tour de force.

And this shows one of the timelapse images from the paper - can you see the tiny cracks forming as the temperature goes down? The circles on the image are cross-sections of carbon fibres, of diameter of around 5 micrometers - that's smaller than human hairs!

The work was led by Prof. Ian Hamerton in collaboration with Dr Ram Ramakrishnan and collaborators at Bristol, at
@imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social, and with the National Composites Centre.

Here @bristoluni.bsky.social and Bristol Composites Institute PhD student James Griffith developed an imaging method based on cryo-scanning electron microscopy, to watch these cracks form in real time as the composite was cooled.

Understanding how and why tiny cracks form in composite materials will help engineers improve cryogenic composite designs—making them safer and more reliable for future applications in cold environments, such as in the growing fields of sustainable aviation and hydrogen storage.

(5/5) Finally I also wanted to acknowledge the three very thorough (😬) reviewers who examined our work along multiple cycles of peer-review. They gave us a bit of a hard time, but they pushed us to significantly improve our work along the way, and we are grateful for that.
#chemsky

(4/5) This work opens the way to using the optical properties of "polymers of intrinsic microporosity" (PIMs) which have been overlooked so far; PIMs are well used in gas separation or water purification, but much less in light harvesting. We hope to report more exciting work in the coming months!

(3/5) The journey was not always straight (pesky pandemic delayed our progress significantly) but I am very happy to see this work published with her as lead author, and with excellent collaborators at @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social (Meihuizi Jiang and Saif Haque).

(2/5) Yuxing (Stella) Wang apparently enjoyed her project as she successfully applied to a Scholarship to pursue PhD studies on the same topic. She became the first PhD student in my group and has been its cornerstone since then. ⭐

Oh and you also had to kneel under the probe to tune it, being careful not to trip in the cables or to hit your head against the instrument in the process 🥲

I’m still not sure about leaving Twitter completely as that would be a (small, obviously) win for the mob and Musk who slowly but surely silence evidence-based information and folks who are not aligned with their Handsmaid’s Tale views - but on the other hand 🤷‍♂️

I was wondering too! First thing I've learned on Bluesky since joining yesterday!