Posted on 02/02/2022 11:20:44 PM PST by Jonty30
Engineers at MIT have developed a new ultrathin material that’s as light as plastic but stronger than steel. The durable material could be used in vehicles or electronics, and makes use of a manufacturing technique that was previously thought impossible.
Polymers are versatile materials, of which plastics are perhaps the most well known examples. Under a microscope, polymers usually look like squiggly threads, one-dimensional chains of units called monomers, but they can be coaxed into three dimensional shapes through manufacturing methods like injection molding.
However, getting polymers to bind together to form two-dimensional sheets has been surprisingly difficult. While some teams have had some success, the resulting materials have faults that reduce their strength or other desirable properties.
(Excerpt) Read more at newatlas.com ...
Steel has approximately twice the tensile strength of aluminum...if this material could be used to completely replace aluminum in airframes, that would be an amazing innovation.
I agree with you.
It will be interesting to see how they apply it as they are able to figure out cost savings and what can be replaced.
Must be. Article was in New ATLAS.com LOL
I found the following below that has the letters that accompanied the parts. Difficult to read - so I didn't!
IIRC the parts were made of a thin metal that was almost impossible to damage (it would bend but would go back to it's original shape). I think some parts had symbols that looked like hieroglyphics???
Stronger blister packs for shipping and display of products. Products that will last for ever as you will never be able to open the packaging it comes in to use it!
They forgot to add it is UV degradeable. So in a few short yrs the car will disappear into dust. This will save storage place in a lot of junkyards. Never mind the dust created is toxic to all living things.
Been there, done that...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkqiDu1BQXY
Sunscreen 40 should take care of that.
As a retired machinist,nc programmer, manufacturing engineer, and then director of research I can tell you that I learned way more about materials than just about anything else except people. I’ve had to make things using everything from wood to ceramics, and tin to nickel superalloys as well as metallic composites. It’s all about the material. ( and developing the tools and methods to work the material). How do you cut work something thats harder than your current cutting tool technology? I’m sure that has been the problem since the stone age.
So you’re saying it’s made from oil, eh? No future for this stuff then...
nearly impossible to dent, but can be carried away by a drunk frat boy and his roommate.
Could be - stack the discs and drill a hole down the middle, or roll the sheets into tubes (although resistance to heat and abrasion may be an issue). The article notes: "Although it’s extremely thin and lightweight, the polymer has a yield strength that’s twice that of steel, and it takes up to six times more force to deform it than bulletproof glass." To me, that also sounds like 'body armor'...
Wait until they weaponize the transformation of 3-D objects/materials into 2-D matter ...
As long as the pilot has suction-cup visors he can move around inside the cockpit, I don’t see why not!
Well this pilot has cups, and I guess suction would be an option.
Transparent aluminum?
New Atlas is a cool website. I pop into it occasionally myself.
This article is a bit of a jumble for me to follow. The Nature magazine article it’s based on is behind a paywall so no joy reading this to maybe help me understand better. The article largely copy and pastes the one page MIT news release that is listed below the Nature link.
I’d like to understand this chemistry better but just make couldn’t make sense of much. Hydrogen bonding that is referred to in the article is closer to a very weak attraction between adjacent molecules as opposed to a strong bond of hydrogen to another element. That said though, I’m not a materials specialist and it’s been way too many years that I dabbled on the edges of the science by doing synthesis computer modeling to support LLD polyethylene production.
Dollar Shave guy will be bidding on that for sure.
How does this match up against spider silk?
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