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Making Common Materials Stronger by Tweaking Their Geometry

New MIT-developed material is 10x stronger than steel, 5% as dense. And that's not even the amazing part

By Rain Noe - January 30, 2017

in Materials

Researchers at MIT have been working on how to make graphene, which is freakishly strong but impractically thin, into a properly-workable 3D substance. It appears they've figured it out, as you'll see in the video below, but that's not even the most interesting part:

By 3D printing—out of ordinary plastic—scaled-up models of graphene's structure, then playing with the geometry, the researchers have been creating extremely strong but lightweight structures with an outlandishly alien-looking appearance that could only be modeled on a computer.

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"You could [use] the geometry we discovered with other materials, like polymers or metals," [Professor Markus] Buehler says, to gain similar advantages of strength combined with advantages in cost, processing methods, or other material properties (such as transparency or electrical conductivity).

"You can replace the material itself with anything," Buehler says. "The geometry is the dominant factor. It's something that has the potential to transfer to many things."

Take a look:

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Read more about the potential applications of these findings here.

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Austin Liu

7 years ago

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A lot of headlines and articles over-state or mis-represent what was figured out. The scientists did not succeed in making this material; they only postulated that graphene, if formed into this geometry, would form a solid that is 10x stronger and 5% the density of steel. That, in my opinion, does not count as having developed the material. There is no currently known production method that will achieve this. This graphene solid is a speculative invention that awaits all the other inventions that don't yet exist that are needed to turn this into a real thing.

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  Austin Liu
  
  7 years ago
  
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  That's not what this article is about. It's about mirroring the molecular structure of graphine with other materials at a larger scale to improve properties such as conductivity and strength.
  
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