New 3D Porous Graphene is One of the Strongest, Lightweight Materials Known

MIT engineers have designed a new 3D material with five percent the density of steel and ten times the strength - making it one of the strongest, lightweight materials known. The material is a sponge-like configuration made by compressing and fusing flakes of graphene. Until now, researchers have had a hard time translating graphene's two-dimensional strength into useful three-dimensional materials. These new findings show that a crucial aspect of the new 3D forms has more to do with their geometrical configuration than with the material itself, which suggests that similar materials could be made by creating similar geometric features. The MIT team compressed the small flakes of graphene using a combination of heat and pressure. This process produced a strong, stable structure whose form resembles that of some corals. These shapes, which have an enormous surface area in proportion to their volume, proved to be remarkably strong.

Transcript

00:00:00 Graphene, in its two-dimensional form, Graphene is thought to be the strongest of all known materials. But translating that two-dimensional strength into useful three-dimensional materials has posed quite the challenge to researchers for decades. But now a team of MIT engineers has successfully designed a new 3-D material with 5% the density of steel and 10 times the strength.

00:00:28 Making it one of the strongest lightweight materials known. And by analyzing the material's behavior down to the level of individual atoms, they were also able to produce a mathematical framework that can accurately predict experimental results. To test their material, the researchers printed 3-D models made purely of commercial plastic and subjected them to various compression tests, to see how much they could handle before the structure

00:00:54 begins to crumble. Here we see two 3-D gyroid models made from the same exact materials. Their only difference is one is composed of thicker walls than the other. Once stress is applied, we almost immediately noticed two very different reactions. The model composed of thinner, more flexible walls enabled it to fail gradually upon increasing deformation. While the other with thicker stiffer walls

00:01:17 is able to store much more deformation energy which has been released in a more severe explosion like manner. Ultimately, their new findings show that the crucial aspect of the new 3D forms has more to do with their unusual geometrical configuration, than with the material itself. Which suggests that similar strong lightweight materials could be made from a variety of materials with similar geometric features.

00:01:40 Having the ability to tune the mechanics of a material by simply adjusting its geometry opens the door to a wide variety of practical applications. Including strong, lightweight, structural materials for airplanes, cars, buildings, and other large-scale applications. Because of their continuous porous geometry and large surface area they could also have applications for filtration and energy storage.