New material combines light weight with high strength

In a new paper published in Advanced Materials, a team led by Professor Tobin Filleter at the University of Toronto describes how they made nanomaterials with properties that offer exceptional strength, light weight and customisation. The approach could benefit a wide range of industries including automotive and aerospace.  

“Nano-architected materials combine high performance shapes, like making a bridge out of triangles, at nanoscale sizes, which takes advantage of the ‘smaller is stronger’ effect, to achieve some of the highest strength-to-weight and stiffness-to-weight ratios, of any material,” said Peter Serles, the first author of the new paper.  

“However, the standard lattice shapes and geometries used tend to have sharp intersections and corners, which leads to the problem of stress concentrations. This results in early local failure and breakage of the materials, limiting their overall potential.  

“As I thought about this challenge, I realised that it is a perfect problem for machine learning to tackle.”  

Nano-architected materials are made of repeating units measuring a few hundred nanometres in size. These building blocks, which are composed of carbon, are arranged in complex 3D nanolattices.