MIT scientists have developed a revolutionary material stronger than steel yet as light as plastic.

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Researchers believe the material could revolutionize the car, mobile phone and building industries.

The easily manufactured substance – up to six times more difficult to break than bulletproof glass – is the result of an engineering feat previously thought to be impossible.

It is a two-dimensional polymer that self-assembles into sheets, unlike all other polymers, which form one-dimensional, spaghetti-like chains.

Until now, scientists believed it was impossible to induce polymers to form 2D sheets.

The researchers filed for two patents on the pioneering process they used to generate the material. Probably a good idea there.

So how did this groundbreaking substance come to be? Polymers, which include all plastics, consist of chains of building blocks called monomers.

The chains grow by adding new molecules onto their ends.

Once formed, polymers can be shaped into three-dimensional objects, such as water bottles, using injection molding. Experts have long believed that if polymers could be induced to grow into a two-dimensional sheet, they should form extremely strong, lightweight materials.

However, many decades of work led to the conclusion that it was impossible to create such sheets.

In the new study, researchers came up with a new polymerization process that allows them to generate a two-dimensional sheet called a polyaramide.

Because the material self-assembles in solution, Strano says it can be made in large quantities by simply increasing the quantity of the starting materials.

The researchers showed that they could coat surfaces with films of the very strong and extremely thin material, which they call 2DPA-1.

Researchers say it is twice as strong as steel but has one sixth the density and it is impermeable to gases and water.

Research on the material is continuing and scientists hope to have more answers and applications for the new material int eh future.

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Video Credit:
Videvo – Videvo.net


Image Credit:
Christine Daniloff, MIT

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