Microlattice, "the world's lightest material"
The microlattice is a "3D open-cellular polymer structure" and is made up of interconnecting hollow tubes whose outer walls measure just one-1,000th the width of a human hair.
The material is one-100th as light as Styrofoam, making it the lightest and also one of the strongest materials known to science.
Watch:
http://www.boeing.com/features/2015/10/innovation-lightest-metal-10-15.page
Article:
http://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-just-released-this-awesome-video-of-the-worlds-lightest-material-2015-10
#scitech #microlattice #boeing #science
I wonder what applications this might have, perhaps could be used in medicine somehow
ReplyDeleteAerospace engineering mostly....we need lighter planes
ReplyDelete... and rockets.. and cars.... :)
ReplyDeleteSpace exploration...
ReplyDeleteI'm one of the inventors - feel free to ask me anything about it (here or in my stream). The researcher in the video is my colleague Sophia Yang.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know that Bill Carter
ReplyDeleteThanks for making the world a lighter place! ;)
Well, I know is made out of nickel....but can be made out of other materials ?
Most certainly Corina Marinescu. We have done copper, silica, niobium, silicon carbide, diamond, other polymers like Parylene, in addition to the base polymer and carbonized variants.
ReplyDeleteWhat's the cell size? It looks millimeters-sized, but we don't see well enough. How does it behave in water? As an electrode?
ReplyDeleteGood question- we can make cells down to 100 microns and up to 5-10 cm. The stability and suitability as an electrode are both dependent on constituent and voltage and environment- so a solid maybe :-)
ReplyDeleteBill Carter - curious - what is the internal surface area / volume ratio for the lattice at the finest (100 micron) cell size? Just wondering if it has any applications towards battery/capacitor tech..?
ReplyDeleteBill Carter Thanks. So the cell size can span three orders of magnitude... is the internal structure of the largest cells simple, or just not decomposable into smaller cubes?
ReplyDeleteCan a single cell of the largest sort be separated, and is it more or less fragile than a small cluster of the same? How does the material interact with microwaves?