'Metallic wood' has strength of titanium but is up to five times lighter

The empty space of the pores, and the self-assembly process in which they're made, make the porous metal analogous to a natural material, such as wood.

The advance from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and Applied Science, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Cambridge University is detailed in Nature Scientific Reports.

The porosity of wood grain serves the biological function of transporting energy. Similarly, the empty space in the researchers' so-called ‘metallic wood’ could be infused with other materials. In one application, scaffolding infused with anode and cathode materials could enable the metallic wood to serve as a prosthetic leg that's also a battery.

The study was led by James Pikul, Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at Penn Engineering. Bill King and Paul Braun at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, along with Cambridge University’s Vikram Deshpande who contributed to the study.