Fibers now have moved from novelty to ubiquity in the last 50 years. While normally we are hardly to analysis the composition of these fibers. The fibers we are using today are mostly “plain vanilla” variety composed primary of silica glass. While this is not enough, scientists and engineers believe that though choosing” right” fibers, lots of new function can be reached. For example fibers that react with an electrical signal when exposed to external light, temperature changes or ultrasonic signals, fibers that monitor their own performance and even fibers that may play a role in various types of “cloaking” metamaterials.
Now researchers have already got some ideas about this technology—multimaterial fibers. This is the technology that introduction of new materials into the fiber composition to yield new structures, functionalities and applications. It’s indicated in the following graph.
From this fact I do believe in the future, Fantastic Four will not just limited in the movie. Every kind of materials has their own benefits and defects, however, though people’s wisdom we are able to combine them and get better materials. Just like human world, a team is always work better than a person. This should be the trend of materials’ future. Anyway, it’s much better to improve characteristics than find new materials.
Measure Fiber-matrix Surface Energy 