Lightest Material in the World Unveiled
A team of US engineers working at the University of California, Irvine, HRL Laboratories and the California Institute of Technology have revealed the result of their latest research, a material they claim to be the world’s lightest.
This material is created from a collection of tiny hollow tubes, each tube having a wall thickness of just 100 nanometers, around 1,000 times thinner than a human hair. These tubes are arranged into a micro-lattice formation, a diagonal pattern with the tubes crossing each other with small open spaces between them.
The resulting density of this material is 0.9 milligrams per cubic centimetre, compared to polystyrene this is around 100 times lighter. This metallic micro-lattice consists of 99.99% air and 0.01% solid which gives it such a low density.
As well as being the lightest material it is also very strong due to the ordered nature of the lattice design. Potential uses of this material due to it’s properties are in shock absorbers and next generation batteries. Further details of this research are published in the latest edition of Science.