Wednesday, 14 October 2015

Microlattice, "the world's lightest material"


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
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11 comments:

  1. Sam Collett14 October 2015 at 11:15

    I wonder what applications this might have, perhaps could be used in medicine somehow

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  2. Corina Marinescu14 October 2015 at 11:28

    Aerospace engineering mostly....we need lighter planes

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  3. Eric Cha14 October 2015 at 11:56

    ... and rockets.. and cars.... :)

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  4. Sam Collett14 October 2015 at 12:06

    Space exploration...

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  5. Bill Carter14 October 2015 at 16:36

    I'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.

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  6. Corina Marinescu14 October 2015 at 21:49

    I didn't know that Bill Carter 
    Thanks for making the world a lighter place! ;)
    Well, I know is made out of nickel....but can be made out of other materials ?

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  7. Bill Carter15 October 2015 at 07:25

    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.

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  8. Boris Borcic20 October 2015 at 13:43

    What's the cell size? It looks millimeters-sized, but we don't see well enough. How does it behave in water? As an electrode?

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  9. Bill Carter20 October 2015 at 13:54

    Good 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 :-)

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  10. Eric Cha20 October 2015 at 14:25

    Bill 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..?

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  11. Boris Borcic20 October 2015 at 16:13

    Bill 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?
    Can 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?

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