US scientists stake a claim for the world's lightest material
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Scientists at US universities claim they have developed the world’s lightest material.
A research team from University of California (UCI) Irvine, HRL Laboratories and the California Institute of Technology said that is has developed the world’s lightest material.
With a density of 0.9mg/cc the material is about 100 times lighter than Styrofoam.
The material is reportedly able to redefine the limits of lightweight materials because of its ’micro-lattice’ cellular architecture.
The researchers were able to make a material that consists of 99.99 per cent air by designing the 0.01 per cent solid at the nanometre, micron and millimetre scales.
‘The trick is to fabricate a lattice of interconnected hollow tubes with a wall thickness 1,000 times thinner than a human hair,’ said lead author Dr Tobias Schaedler of HRL.
The material’s architecture is said to allow unprecedented mechanical behaviour for a metal, including complete recovery from compression exceeding 50 per cent strain and extraordinarily high energy absorption.
‘Materials actually get stronger as the dimensions are reduced to the nanoscale,’ explained Lorenzo Valdevit, UCI mechanical and aerospace engineer, and the university’s principal investigator on the project.
‘Combine this with the possibility of tailoring the architecture of the micro-lattice and you have a unique cellular material,’ he said.
Developed for the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the material could possibly be used for battery electrodes and acoustic, vibration or shock energy absorption.
William Carter, manager of the architected materials group at HRL, compared the material to larger, more familiar edifices: ’Modern buildings, exemplified by the Eiffel Tower or the Golden Gate Bridge, are incredibly light and weight-efficient by virtue of their architecture. We are revolutionising lightweight materials by bringing this concept to the nano and micro scales.’
The team’s findings have appeared in the journal Science.
Readers' comments (7)
Tom | 21 Nov 2011 3:08 pm
I wonder if this material could be used to construct a light weight wing skinned in graphene perhaps, to make the ultimate light weight wing structure or would it be too weak?
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david carpenter | 21 Nov 2011 9:07 pm
Nice picture. What are the bulk properties: Youngs modulus, poisson, max bending, tensile, compression stress? Can it be machined?, would that compromise properties (surface anomalies)? What are the valid materials for the process (presently)?
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JohnK | 22 Nov 2011 8:55 am
Hmmmm...Hollow, interconnected tubes.... If these are of a 'closed cell' type, what would be the effect of filling the nanotubes with helium?
Not sure of the math here, but conceiveably a 'lighter than air' structural material.
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Sukhdev Singh Sagoo | 22 Nov 2011 5:34 pm
Good but can it replace say steel, maybe it can be used for insulation or sound proofing?
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JoeZ | 22 Nov 2011 6:51 pm
along JohnK lines....creating this material at partial atmospheric pressure (in the closed cells) would potentially create a very rigid structure in the upper atmosphere...thinking "balloon" cities or at least solar collection stations.....
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peter heirman | 23 Nov 2011 7:58 am
Filling the tubes with helium probably is not sufficient to achieve a lighter than air material, but replacing all the air with helium definitely is. You just need a membrane around the material to achieve this.
Closed cell foam filled with a lighter than air gas is another way to obtain a lighter than air material, e.g. SEAgel invented in 1992.
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John McLoughlin | 29 Nov 2011 1:22 pm
Not sure the unqualified description "material" isn't grossly misleading, as the low apparent density is achieved by (very clever) manipulation of the material of construction, the true density of which is not given. Nor is its identity. Likewise, "Styrofoam" is a highly cellular variant of polystyrene, which has a true density of about 1.04 Mg/m3 (= 1.04 grammes/cc = 1040 milligrammes/cc). To simply say the new "material" is 100 times lighter than Styrofoam is rather loose, as expanded polystyrene (EPS, or XPS) is available in a huge range of densities, from around 8-100 milligrammes/cc. Having said all that, the FORM of the material clearly offers immense promise, especially if (as is likely) it is possible to vary the void/solid ratio steplessly. This approach is already carried out on Selective Laser Melted (SLM) components in a variety of metallic and polymeric materials, using solid skins and 3-D latticework interiors, though not at nanometric scales. We all have structures like this inside our bodies. They're called BONES. For metallic variants of the new structure, there must be some great opportunities for catalysts, thermal management and electrical control, I would have thought. Some concerns, surely, though, given the huge surface area to volume ratios. Any material prone to rapid oxidation, aluminium included, would present interesting challenges. Make no mistake, though, this is a real game-changer.
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