An MIT researcher has compiled data on the microstructures of a number of different plants, from apples and potatoes to willow and spruce trees, and has found that plants exhibit an enormous range of mechanical properties, depending on the arrangement of a cell wall’s four main building blocks: cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin and pectin.

"Plants are multifunctional," Gibson says. "They have to satisfy a number of requirements: mechanical ones, but also growth, surface area for sunlight and transport of fluids. The microstructures plants have developed satisfy all these requirements. With the development of nanotechnology, I think there is potential to develop multifunctional engineering materials inspired by plant microstructures."

Lorna J. Gibson: The hierarchical structure and mechanics of plant materials, In: Journal of the Royal Society Interface, August 8, 2012, DOI:10.1098/rsif.2012.0341: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2012.0341

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/mechanical-pro-prerties-of-plants-0813.html

Image: A scanning electron micrograph of carrot, top, and potato, bottom, showing relatively thin-walled cells. The oval objects within the potato tissue are starch granules. © Don Galler

Breakthrough research jointly completed by the researchers Professor Min Gu and Dr. Xiangping Li of Swinburne University (Australia) and a visiting PhD student from National Chiao Tung University,Taiwan, has demonstrated a novel means of encrypting data for secure electronic storage. The researchers have developed a unique approach to aiming a laser beam that will enable increased data storage capacity as well as the ability to encrypt information on DVDs coated with gold nanorods.