We’re very pleased to have Jie Qi on MAKE for our Advanced Materials month (which has been extended until Feb 6). Her bio is so impressive, I thought I’d post the entire thing:

I was born in China and moved to the US when I was 6… Fast forward to college at Columbia University. I started out a pre-medical/biomedical engineering major and spent a semester and summer doing tissue engineering research in the MBL group. That same summer, I got an internship in Brooklyn building sculptures out of bottles for Aurora Robson, through which I fell in love with art again. So I changed my major to mechanical engineering (because they get access to the machine shop!) and discovered new media art. At this point, I got started on the littleBits project with Ayah Bdeir and learned to design and build electronics. She introduced me to the Media Lab, and I immediately fell in love with the place. So I got a summer internship in Leah Buechley’s group. That summer, I discovered the Arduino and the joys of paper + electronics. After I went back to Columbia for my senior year, I continued working on littleBits and spent a semester attempting to make microscale artwork using photolithography and microfluidics in the LMTP research group. Turns out it’s really hard to make art when you can’t see it! After graduating (with a BS in mechanical engineering), I came straight to the Media Lab and started my masters in the High-Low Tech group. I’m still here, now in my second year, and learning tons every day!

Jie put together this wonderful introduction to shape-memory alloys (SMA) for us. Thanks, Jie! Great to have you aboard. -Gareth

You’ve likely heard about shape-memory alloys (SMAs), metals that change shape when heated to an activation temperature. When cool, they are malleable and can be shaped like a typical metal. However, when heated to activation, they return to their preset shape. At the atomic level, the crystalline structure of an SMA changes with heat from one regular structure to another. However, while all metals will change shape with heat (i.e. melt), SMAs change shape all in solid phase and this change is reversible. For example:

The most commonly used SMA is nitinol (nickel titanium). Commercially it can come in unset form, meaning it has no “memory” yet, as well as pre-trained shapes like muscle wire which contracts when heated (hence the name).

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