Super-Strong Material Made from Ceramics

Sep-14-14 An incredibly strong and lightweight new material made using ceramic could find its way into both vehicles and batteries.

The material—which is in the form of a cube— was created by carefully designing its structure on the nanoscale, a technique that was developed by a team led by Julia Greer of Caltech. This nanoscale design technique allows materials to act in an entirely new way (like not shattering, which is what one would normally expect from ceramics). The cube is made of a series of trusses of a specific diameter arranged in a lattice-like structure, which allows it to regain its shape after being crushed.

If the ceramic nano-structures can be made in large quantities at a reasonable price, they could provide a new, lightweight material for manufacturing airplanes and trucks as well as battery electrodes.

Larger Image: Compression experiments on thick- and thin-walled nanolattices

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[GIZMODO.COM]
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