MIT Engineers Create New Material Stronger Than Steel and Light as Plastic
scitechdaily.comTitle should be, "MIT Engineers Create New Material Stronger Than Steel, Light as Plastic, and More Expensive than Gold"
For now. It sounds like the process to manufacture it could scale pretty well though. This could be just the beginning of a new class of material
Melamine is cheap as hell. The lab apparatus they used is expensive but this process is really scalable.
A stack of alternating graphene and layers of this material would be interesting - we're starting to get into mass produced molecular level materials engineering.
and the first iphone cost about... idk, $10m in R&D?
Comparing with abstract steel is kind of useless as the strength of common steel varies by factor of 3. If one compare the cheapest steel and exotic alloys (that are often only produced in Sweden and may cost more than silver), then the difference is at least a factor of 20.
> They also found that its yield strength, or how much force it takes to break the material, is twice that of steel, even though the material has only about one-sixth the density of steel.
> Under the right conditions, these monomers can grow in two dimensions, forming disks. These disks stack on top of each other, held together by hydrogen bonds between the layers, which make the structure very stable and strong
Sounds like they could just layer it to create very strong lightweight structures.
Nylon fishing line is stronger than steel and light as plastic.
...in tension.
Surely that's the joke. There must be two or three of these "scientists make material stronger and lighter than steel" headlines every year for decades (probably for as long as steel has existed, lmao.) The headline never specifies what they actually mean by "stronger than steel", but the naive reader would walk away with the impression that steel is now an obsolete material, which never pans out.
Perhaps these materials scientists are in a friendly competition with the scientists behind all the "Scientists invent revolutionary new battery technology" headlines.
And is nylon able to form rigid 3 dimensional structures?
For some values of 'rigid', yes. Here's a bicycle made out of nylon:
https://www.bikeradar.com/news/airbike-nylon-bicycle-first-l...
> Two British engineers have designed a bike, christened the Airbike, made entirely of nylon – and they claim it’s as strong as steel.
The answer is obviously yes.
(Did you actually mean to ask "can nylon form rigid 3D structures that can be substituted for a girder in a skyscraper or bridge?")
Yes, you probably have a bunch at home in various knick-knacks. Plastic gears are usually nylon, for example.
The better ones are delrin (a.k.a acteal). It has a low coefficient of friction.
Interesting, thanks, I probably can't tell the difference and have just assumed they're all nylon to be honest!
Delrin gears are not uniformly better. They have a lower coefficient of friction, but they can handle less torque. It's a tradeoff.
false
There is also the micro plastics issue to solve, before widening the scope of plastic applications.
The world should absolutely solve the micro plastics issue, but the world should absolutely not stop developing new plastics or finding new uses for plastics until that problem is solved.
There should be more research into the impact of micro plastic particles. That doesn't mean we should stop research into new applications. These things can, and should, happen in parallel.
Exactly, plastic is not a material but a very broad category of materials with a wide range of properties. Micro-plastics are a specific problem with some plastics and rubbers in e.g. tires and other materials on cars because they erode away with normal use and the resulting dust is then flushed into sewers, waterways, and eventually the ocean.
Material science is providing a wide range of new and exciting options that go above and beyond what we could do only a few years ago. Dismissing something with essentially no understanding whatsoever is not helpful.
> Dismissing something with essentially no understanding whatsoever is not helpful.
The problem with the plastics industry, the reason so many people are fed up with it, is the 'understanding' you speak of tends to lag their industrial application by many years. So we end up with a whole lot of "X is now known to have bad properties, but we already use too much of it to change now." For instance, virtually every thermoset plastic in use today is impossible to recycle, but there seems to be no going back. Their use continues to proliferate.
On a long time range doesn’t all plastic become micro plastics unless it’s incinerated? Clothes, food packaging, electronics, etc
To add to your point. New R&D for plastics is probably where the solution to microplastics is going to come from.
Some researcher building the next superplastic pauses to say "hey that's funny" and bam we've got a new formula that completely prevents the formation of microplastics.
Artificially constraining development is a great way to either miss an important direction of research that will unknowingly solve our problems OR just kill the industry leaving us with our existing plastics that degrade into microplastics.
Of course new developments should definitely run a microplastics study to make sure we don't make the situation worse. However "no more this until that" is a great way to freeze ourselves into our current less than ideal state for decades longer than we have to be here.
> Some researcher building the next superplastic pauses to say "hey that's funny" and bam we've got a new formula that completely prevents the formation of microplastics.
My understanding is that microplastics are a result of regular wear and tear, and I don't think a material exist that is immune to that. If anything, a new plastic formula may be created that hardens it enough to reduce the shedding to a negligible level.
The solution might be a plastic that naturally decomposes. Of course, that would likely make the material less durable...
so your solution is to make the microplastics smaller?
Struggling to understand how did infer that from my take?
THIS ^^^. My concerns are less and less about preserving my phone and more and more about preserving my planet. Show me a phone that can be completely recycled instead of giving me the illusion that it won't break because of x or y. Eventually it's going to be to sluggish for modern applications (because of its cpu or because of its battery).
I have a growing pile of now useless phones even at my house that I never broke because I take care of my investments.
And while I wouldn't expect a company to search out "right" solutions, I would hope that MIT as an educational institution could see beyond money and at least get in front of where the hockey puck should be, and not where it's tended to go (I'm speaking of sustainable profits on a planet in which we can live vs just amazing profits on an uninhabitable planet).
My last phone was used for 6 years before the battery didn't last a day of light use. My new phone has a replaceable battery. I intend to use it for at least 10 years.
Processors in phones haven't been changing much over the last few years. CPU throttling to deal with battery degradation is where most of the slowdown comes from.
Personally I like the idea of modular phones such that you can swap out only components that are obsolete or damaged.
Although, ultimately, this feels like a market/advertising issue over a technical issue. While I'm not convinced a 100% recycle phone will ever be a likelihood; surely we can get to 90%. Or slow down the trash generation with the aforementioned modular phone.
However it's going to require people to want to spend money on such a thing and also industry to want to produce and advertise such a thing. None of which seems like it's happening anytime soon.
How much does a modular design really extend the life of a computer? Very few people (my father aside) are actively trying to keep computers from the 90’s orearly 2000’s alive. That my 10-year-old MacBook is still kicking is kind of a miracle (and only because I have harvested the guts from two others).
I once set up a computer workshop using PCs discarded by university labs. I assembled about a dozen PCs from about 20 discards. One of them served as a DSL router.
In retrospect, I regret it; I saved those PCs from going to the dump, but:
- They were not power-efficient
- Because the hardware was a decade old, they had poor connectivity options
I used to seek out computers that were maximally upgradeable. But in practice, the only thing I ever upgraded was disk and memory. I still have a box of obsolete memory cards. Stuff gets obsolete very quickly these days.
> Stuff gets obsolete very quickly these days.
What do you mean these days? Computers used to obsolete within months in the 90s as ever-faster CPUs kept coming out.
No longer true, with the death of Moore's Law. Computers from 2010 are still quite usable (I have several, servers & laptop) since speed increases over the last decade are incremental at best.
I've been buying computers since the 80s and now is the golden age of longevity for equipment.
Well longevity in terms of "not much performance increases per generation" but the quality of goods isn't necessarily there. My middle mouse button of my thinkpad just randomly fell a day ago. I don't think I've ever even used the middle button... My laptop is about 3years old and for the first 2years was barely used because I used a different machine... My old pixel 3 phone had a few issues with it too. The USB-C port stopped working perfectly after a software update and wasn't being rma'd at the time. Battery bulge popped off the back.
I wish devices were made to last for at least 10years, only my modular desktop with haswell gen CPU has lasted that long. I downgraded it from daily to something else.
The only reason a 10 year old macbook seems like a miracle is because expectations are low for the Apple brand particularly. For other brands of laptop, 10 years old isn't terribly unusual. And for diy PC builds, I dare say 10 years old is actually typical (albeit usually in a 'Ship of Theseus' sense, but that's the point isn't it?)
Is that really the case for anyone but dedicated hobbyists? I would be honestly shocked to learn that the average life of any laptop brand runs higher than 5-6 years on average before being discarded.
In my experience, the average PC gamer upgrades their PC with a few new parts every few years, and even that isn't certain. Replacing the whole thing every 5 years seems atypical, that's a lot of money to be throwing around (particularly when many PC gamers are in it for the long-term economy.)
The average PC gamer is, of course, not the average computer user which is far more likely to be using a generic laptop or smartphone.
Which is all to say, I understand why we want modularity, but - for most computer users - a much more necessary path forward is a reimagining omaterials recyclability.
I think the average computer user is even more likely to be using old hardware than a gamer. The average Joe browsing facebook could be perfectly content with a 15 year old computer. Gamers at least are pressured to periodically update their hardware by the appeal of games that demand more than their old computer can provide.
>"I have a growing pile of now useless phones even at my house that I never broke because I take care of my investments."
pile of useless phones as an investment is some rather novel idea.
I also have few old ones but they're not useless, each is relegated to controlling particular gadget. Camera, drone, etc.
Was it clear to anyone in what way it's stronger than steel? The article mostly talks about applications where it's used as a coating. At the same time it says the sheets can be layered and create very strong bonds. Why can't I make the entire object out of this polymer? Is it hard to tear but not very rigid/too floppy? It sounded like it won't bust the bank either.
“The researchers found that the new material’s elastic modulus — a measure of how much force it takes to deform a material — is between four and six times greater than that of bulletproof glass. They also found that its yield strength, or how much force it takes to break the material, is twice that of steel, even though the material has only about one-sixth the density of steel.”
Emphasis added.
So, if I understand this correctly it's strong in pretty much any practical way. Then I still don't understand why they only talk about coating, given they also keep saying it's easy to produce.
Can anyone explain why having polymer connected in 2d sheets is better than connecting in all 3 dimensions?
The planar sheet structure is compared to linear polymer strands, not to a 3 dimensional cube polymer.
The strength advantage would be more like layers of carbon fiber cloth compared to loose fiberglass fibers. Even with the same resin the sheets have a significant advantage structurally.
From the article:
>The new material is a two-dimensional polymer that self-assembles into sheets, unlike all other polymers, which form one-dimensional, spaghetti-like chains. Until now, scientists had believed it was impossible to induce polymers to form 2D sheets.
ie: the existing polymers use 1D chains, not 3D.
The existing thermoplastic polymers use 1D chains.
The thermosetting polymers are initially synthesized as 1D chains, but after they are made into their intended form, the curing reaction cross-links all the 1D chains into a 3D network.
Because of its 3D structure, a cured thermosetting polymer can no longer be dissolved or melted. At high temperatures it will decompose or burn, instead of melting.
However, the thermosetting polymers, unlike covalent crystals like diamond, boron or silicon, have a 3D structure with big holes in it, so they are permeable to gases and other substances with small molecules.
The 2D polymer discussed in the parent article has a 2D structure similar to graphite sheets, i.e. a dense 2D lattice, without holes or pores.
This dense structure allows applications that cannot be done with traditional polymer coatings. This coating should be inpermeable like a glass, without being fragile.
The fact that it is light, as mentioned in the title, is pretty much irrelevant, because this is a material that is suitable only for coatings on objects made of other materials, not for the bulk material of an object.
The article also said that one of biggest challenges with making 2D polymer was keeping it 2D without it going 3D. But there was no explanation why that would be worse.
Normally the molecules can only assemble in a chain. They can make solids in three dimensions by being long and making a big tangled mess. It's like extruding dough into spaghetti, then stirring it around to make a big tangled ball. Instead, they found a way to roll the dough out into an arbitrarily large flat lasagna-like noodle. Then they stacked them and found they stick to each other well and could make a much stronger material than the spaghetti ball. The only real limit being the amount of dough and a space to roll it out on.
Maybe a self-assembled 3D lattice would have some disorder due to the extra degree of freedom which translates to structural weakness.
All crystals are by definition self-assembled 3D lattices.
However, single crystals are inconvenient as materials, because growing a crystal (i.e. self-assembling it) is a slow process.
Moreover, growing a single crystal so that it will have some useful form is difficult for a few forms and impossible for most forms.
Therefore the normal way to make something from a single crystal is by growing a large crystal and then removing much of it, leaving only the desired form.
Because of this disadvantages, making anything out of a self-assembled 3D lattice, a.k.a. crystal, is restricted to a few applications where the properties of a single crystal are essential, i.e. various electronic or optical devices.
In most cases, the most convenient materials are either thermoplastic materials, i.e. metals, glasses or thermoplastic polymers, or materials that are produced in a soft plastic state and after forming they can be transformed into a hard state by some treatment, i.e. ceramics, cements or thermosetting polymers.
A disordered 3D lattice is an amorphous material, e.g. a glass (unlike a crystal, which is obtained by very slow cooling, to allow time for the self-assembling of the ordered lattice, a glass is obtained by very fast cooling, which does not allow time for ordered self-assembling) or a thermosetting polymer.
This looks very interesting, in particular that it can be made gas-tight:
> "Another key feature of 2DPA-1 is that it is impermeable to gases. While other polymers are made from coiled chains with gaps that allow gases to seep through, the new material is made from monomers that lock together like LEGOs, and molecules cannot get between them."
However, this is yet another example of how excessive corporatization of academia can block the adoption and spread of new technologies created with taxpayer funds:
> "The research was funded by the Center for Enhanced Nanofluidic Transport (CENT) an Energy Frontier Research Center sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, and the Army Research Laboratory."
> "The researchers have filed for two patents on the process they used to generate the material..."
So, who gets access to these patents? It should be the case that MIT be required to license these patents to any American citizen who is interested, non-exclusively, for free, as it was American taxpayers who financed this project.
Similarly, the actual paper is hidden behind a paywall at Nature, so independent researchers without an institutional affiliation have no access to the details without paying ridiculous fees; the paper wasn't uploaded to arxiv and isn't yet on sci-hub, and why not? So some publishers can extract fees for their decrepit business model?
Sci-hub_se does at least have copies of some of the references cited in the paper, if you search for this one you'll get the background (2009): "Two-Dimensional Polymers: Just a Dream of Synthetic Chemists?"
> "The fact that one can now isolate and investigate the natural 2D polymer graphene begs the question as to whether such intriguing structures could also be synthesized. [5] This question is not limited to whether one can synthesize graphene—this would be just one target of the entire family of 2D polymers, although admittedly an especially compli- cated and challenging one. It is meant much more general in the sense: Can one provide reliable and broadly applicable concepts to tackle the synthetic and analytical issues associ- ated with the creation of polymers which meet the structural characteristics of graphene (that is, one repeating unit thick, covalently bonded, and long-range order). Clearly, this would constitute a substantial advance for chemistry in particular, and the molecular sciences in general"
Bahy-Dole Act and DoD Federal Acquisition Regs. are the answer to your question about "who gets access to these patents" and should be the focus of reform if you find them inadequate. Outside my area of the law, but my understanding is prior to Bahy-Dole, it was common for the Gov. to take title to patents arising from Gov. funded research, and that this was seen as a disincentive to commercializing the technology. So Bahy-Dole adjusted the balance, with certain lesser rights (like march in rights and a license) going to the government to try to drive more commercialization of the technology that was invented under Gov. contracts.
> for free, as it was American taxpayers who financed this project.
Just because something was financed by taxpayer money does not mean it should be free. It is definitely not a rule or how things work. Although I am curious what are the disadvantages of making it free, I bet there are some, even if lightweight.
If not entirely free, certainly a non-exclusive commercial licensing model with low fees makes more sense. This was how the system worked before Bayh-Dole Act was passed in the 1980s (one result was that corporations wanting to do strictly proprietary research were then incentivized to finance large private research institutions like Bell Labs).
From a nationalist standpoint. A country sets the playground right for this kind of development to happen though funding, freedom, support, whatever. I imagine that the people putting in this effort want to harvest the benefits within their own economy, and not just gift it away. Some roadblocks might be associated with this.
Speculating, but would a 1-2% sales tax that was offset from other taxes on products that used a govt patented TCP/IP have hampered development? It wouldn't have hurt FOSS because a 1% sales or import/export sales tax on old unix install media wouldn't have been significant, and once we had FOSS, we could have included the patented tech in free versions, where it was only when you sold media the sales tax was applied.
Not sure how many patents are held in limbo by govt, but well crafted rules about just a sales tax on products that include govt patented techs could be a plausibly fair way to recoup research investments while making them free to innovation. It's somewhere between the way the (pernicious) RIAA/FACTOR collects royalties on music via surcharges on broadcast and streaming, old "shareware" licenses, and the viral aspect of the GPL, but instead it's via a sales tax.
It could be a unique case for opening up patent archives but then adding a niche licensing and import/export tax on products that use the govt patented materials or technology. Even though I think the idea of using taxes as incentives is fundamentally broken, and there is someting dystopian about universities effectively collecting private taxes through the patent system, in a case like technology transfer, it opens up the tech for innovation and doesn't collect until revenue and profit are realized. It's tax revenue a govt has actually earned by investing, so there is even a plausible libertarian case for it.
I feel like I’ve been hearing about Materials of this type for years and have never seen anything practical built with it. How about they make a phone with this already?
I wonder what kind of efficiencies can be gained by swapping out metal for this in EV vehicles
Why only in EVs? Gas and hybrid vehicles could benefit also
This sounds like it should be headline news, a much bigger deal than votes imply.
Finally, plasteel.
Sounds like transparent aluminum.
Ruby?
except that aluminum is a recyclable.
I can't take this too seriously after the "stock video to illustrate the concept of a super strong cell phone" at the top.