Stealth Glider Made Out of Special Polymer Self-Destructs in Sunlight
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Spies and soldiers might soon be able to go behind enemy lines using a parachute or glider made from a polymer that vanishes on exposure to sunlight.
"This started off with building small sensors for the government - microphones, cameras, things that detect metal," says Paul Kohl at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who presented the work at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in California this week.
The idea was that these sensors could be spread across a battlefield, say, and used to collect information for the army. "But you don't want anyone to discover it and take it apart and see how it works," says Kohl.
[...] They based their polymer on a chemical called an aldehyde and mixed in other chemical additives that can either make it rigid for use in a glider or sensor, or flexible to make a fabric for a parachute.
Sunlight or artificial light can trigger the material to go poof. Or, in true spy style, a small light emitting diode can be placed inside a device to trigger the self-destruct process on demand. All that's left behind is a residue and a faint smell, which Kohl says are from the additives that control the rigidity of the material.
Kohl says he and his team have already made a glider with a six-foot wingspan from the material. It can only carry objects weighing about 1 kilogram, so it could only be used to covertly transport objects, not people, for the moment. The glider would have to travel under cover of darkness to avoid disintegrating in flight.
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