Citing inspiration from the ability of a bone to maintain its strength despite being hollow on the inside, one of the world’s foremost aerospace and defense firms is claiming to have created “the world’s lightest material”–a new metal said to be made out of 99.9 percent air.
According to CNN and The Huffington Post, Boeing announced that this microlattice material is similar to a sponge in appearance and light enough to sit on a dandelion (and to prove their point, the company released a photo of it doing just that), while still being both strong and flexible.
Boeing described the material as an “open cellular polymer structure” made primarily out of hollow tubes. Each tube’s wall is just 100 nanometers thick, or 1,000 times thinner than human hair. This allows the material to stay light weight while maintaining its metallic properties.
Just how light and strong is it? As the Daily Mail reported, Boeing claims it’s 100 times lighter than Styrofoam, and that an egg wrapped in the material would be able to survive a fall of 25 stories. It can also reportedly completely recover from compression of more than 50 percent.
Super-light, strong material could have many uses
The metal was developed by HRL Laboratories, a joint venture involving Boeing and General Motors, and researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the University of California Irvine. It weighs only one-tenth as much as carbon fiber, Bill Carter, the head of HRL’s Sensors and Materials Laboratory, told CNN.
Carter believes that the material will initially be used to build rockets for NASA’s upcoming space exploration missions in about five years. It will take about 10 years before it can be used in commercial aircraft, he explained to reporters earlier this week.
Once it’s used on commercial jets, it will likely be manufactured into structural components such as sidewalls or floor panels, The Huffington Post added. HRL representatives believe that the cost of manufacturing the metal will need to drop a little more before it could be used on an automobile, and the company added that it could be used to make onboard luggage carriers.
Originally developed for use by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), this unusual material could also be used for battery electrodes and catalyst supports, the Daily Mail added. It could also dampen acoustics, vibration, or even shock energy, and is expected to reduce the mass of future spacecraft by as much as 40 percent!
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Feature Image: Boeing
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