“Stronger than steel and as light as plastic”: an “impossible” polymer in 2D that self-assembles into sheets shows great promise, say chemical engineers from MIT
A team of MIT chemical engineers say they have created “a new material that is stronger than steel and as light as plastic.”
This new material out of say, a Bond movie, or the laboratory of Bruce Wayne, could be used in technology such as “a lightweight, durable coating” for car parts and cell phones, or as “a building material for bridges or other structures,” says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and the senior author of the new study.
Researchers say that the new material is between four and six times more resistant to deformation than bulletproof glass and twice as much strength is needed to break it than steel. Even though the new material has all these wondrous qualities, it is only one sixth as dense as steel. Polymers, which include all plastics, are formed of monomers, that are chains of building blocks that grow by adding new molecules onto their ends. Polymers can be shaped into 3D objects such as water bottles by using injection molding, theEven though hypothetically 2D polymers were possible, in reality none of the scientists working in the field was able to create such sheets.
The material can be produced en masse by increasing the quantity of ingredients which then self-assemble in solution. The researchers demonstrated they could coat surfaces with films of this material, which they named 2DPA-1.
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