Smaller than a human hair, this ultralight material is harder than Kevlar and stronger than steel

Tram Ho

A joint research project just published in Nature Materials by engineers from MIT, Caltech and ETH Zurich has created a “nanostructured” material that has been shown to be stronger than Kevlar and steel. . When scaled up, this material could develop protective coatings, explosion-proof shields, and shock-resistant armor for various industries.

Nhỏ hơn tóc người, vật liệu siêu nhẹ này còn cứng hơn Kevlar và bền hơn cả thép - Ảnh 1.

By using nanometer-sized carbon struts, the new material has been shown to have impressive durability. The material has been tested by firing microparticles at supersonic speeds to see how it deforms, with very good results.

This material is smaller than the width of a human hair but can still prevent microscopic high-speed particles from passing through it. According to the researchers behind the project, when compared to the impact-resistant materials of Kevlar fibers and steel, this new nanotechnology outperforms all.

Nhỏ hơn tóc người, vật liệu siêu nhẹ này còn cứng hơn Kevlar và bền hơn cả thép - Ảnh 2.

The team tested the material’s resilience by firing microparticles at supersonic speeds at it and found that the material, thinner than the width of a human hair, prevented the tiny particles from tearing through.

The study’s lead author, Carlos Portela, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, stated: “For the same mass, our material would be much more effective at stopping an object from ejecting than it is. Kevlar.”

This could mean that when produced on a larger scale, the new material will be able to provide a very strong, lightweight alternative to conventional impact resistant materials (Kevlar or sheet steel). ).

Nhỏ hơn tóc người, vật liệu siêu nhẹ này còn cứng hơn Kevlar và bền hơn cả thép - Ảnh 3.

The researchers have engineered an ultra-lightweight material made from nanometer-sized carbon struts that give the material high strength and mechanical strength.

“Knowledge from this research can provide design principles for ultralight impact resistant materials for use in effective armor materials, protective coatings, and explosion proof shields in defense applications.” and the universe, ” said study co-author Julia R. Greer, professor of materials science, mechanics, and medical engineering at Caltech.

To test the new material’s hardness, engineers decided to shoot with hypersonic particles and study how it reacts. For the first time at Caltech, engineers used a piece of nanomaterial fabricated by two-photon lithography to create a tetrakaidecahedron, a structure considered the best shape to build. every structure in space.

Nhỏ hơn tóc người, vật liệu siêu nhẹ này còn cứng hơn Kevlar và bền hơn cả thép - Ảnh 4.

The material can absorb a lot of energy due to the shock compression mechanism of cya3 struts at the nanoscale, compared to something completely dense and monolithic, not a nanostructure

The study authors say that this structure has been used historically with energy-absorbing foams. The reason behind this is that carbon is usually quite brittle, but this 3D structure will give it the flexibility it needs to deform quickly without breaking completely.

Once fabricated, the material is washed to remove excess resin and then fired in a high-temperature vacuum furnace to convert the polymer into an ultralight nanostructure of pure carbon.

It is subjected to the high-energy impact of 14 micron-wide silicon oxide particles. The particles are accelerated to supersonic speeds using a laser focused through a slide coated with gold oxide and silicon.

This process leads to the creation of a plasma from gold that pushes the silicon oxide particles out in the direction of the laser very quickly. This setup allows the researchers to precisely control the speed of the ejected microparticles so that they can test speeds from 40 meters per second to 1,100 meters per second.

For comparison, the speed of sound is about 340 meters per second.

Nhỏ hơn tóc người, vật liệu siêu nhẹ này còn cứng hơn Kevlar và bền hơn cả thép - Ảnh 5.

Using a high-speed camera, the researchers captured video of the microparticles interacting with the nanostructured material.

The impacts are recorded with a high-speed camera and the results are carefully studied to see how the material reacts. Using two different densities, they found that the denser variant (with thicker struts) was more resilient and that the particles tended to sink into the material rather than tear through it.

Through further study, including separation, they were even able to predict how the material would react using the Buckingham-Π theorem commonly used to study meteoric impacts. .

Nhỏ hơn tóc người, vật liệu siêu nhẹ này còn cứng hơn Kevlar và bền hơn cả thép - Ảnh 6.

The team found that they could predict the type of damage the material would suffer by using a model to describe meteorite impacts.

In the future, the team hopes to use their findings to predict the resilience of other nanostructured materials as well as materials other than carbon.

Reference: IE

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Source : Genk