Material engineers from the University of California, Caltech, and the Boeing-owned HRL Laboratories, have jointly created a new material that in all probability is the lightest material on Earth: it’s 100 times lighter than Styrofoam and can sit atop a dandelion without disrupting its fluffy seeds.
At least, that’s what the peer-reviewed journal Science consented, when it published the research team’s findings in the upcoming November issue. In fact, the material is said to float like a feather if dropped from shoulder height.
The material—known as ultralight metallic microlattice—uses a hollow honeycomb-like microlattice architecture to create an interwoven network of thin struts that consists of 99.99% air. These struts, which measure approximately 100 micrometers in diameter and have walls that are around 100 nanometers thick, exhibit a high strength to weight ratio, unlocking future potential in aerospace thermal insulation, impact protection, acoustic dampening, and possibly even battery electrodes.
“The trick is to fabricate a lattice of interconnected hollow tubes with a wall thickness 1,000 times thinner than a human hair,” lead author Tobias Shandler, stated in the press release.
The lightweight material is primary composed of nickel (90%), but Bill Carter, manager of the architected materials group at HRL, told The La Times that it can be fabricated from other materials as well. Nickel just happened to be more convenient and cost efficient.
It was fabricated using a template formed by “self-propagating photopolymer waveguide prototyping, coating the template with electroless nickel plating, before etching away at the template until the desire shape is achieved. The resulting micolattice features density less than densities ρ ≥ 0.9 milligram per cubic centimeter, and the ability to completely recover from compression surpassing 50% strain.
Source: The La Times via Sciencemag
Advertisement
Learn more about Electronic Products Magazine
