9 ms·

MIT Engineers Create New Material Stronger Than Steel and Light as Plastic

110 points by leothekim 4y ago

Karliss 4y ago
Can anyone explain why having polymer connected in 2d sheets is better than connecting in all 3 dimensions?
- AussieWog93 4y ago
  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.
  - Karliss 4y ago
    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.
    - abracadaniel 4y ago
      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.
  - adrian_b 4y ago
    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.
- elif 4y ago
  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.
- Gatsky 4y ago
  Maybe a self-assembled 3D lattice would have some disorder due to the extra degree of freedom which translates to structural weakness.
  - adrian_b 4y ago
    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.
riazrizvi 4y ago
This sounds like it should be headline news, a much bigger deal than votes imply.
MeteorMarc 4y ago
There is also the micro plastics issue to solve, before widening the scope of plastic applications.
- loudmax 4y ago
  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.
  - Verdex 4y ago
    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.
    - cromka 4y ago
      > 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.
      - donkarma 4y ago
zeroping 4y ago
I can't take this too seriously after the "stock video to illustrate the concept of a super strong cell phone" at the top.
dccoolgai 4y ago
Sounds like transparent aluminum.
- alanwreath 4y ago
  except that aluminum is a recyclable.
- mrcartmeneses 4y ago
  Ruby?
redleggedfrog 4y ago
kazinator 4y ago
Nylon fishing line is stronger than steel and light as plastic.
- ARandomerDude 4y ago
  ...in tension.
  - robonerd 4y ago
    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.
    - mrandish 4y ago
      Perhaps these materials scientists are in a friendly competition with the scientists behind all the "Scientists invent revolutionary new battery technology" headlines.
- devenson 4y ago
  false
- Dlanv 4y ago
  And is nylon able to form rigid 3 dimensional structures?
  - robonerd 4y ago
    For some values of 'rigid', yes. Here's a bicycle made out of nylon: https://www.bikeradar.com/news/airbike-nylon-bicycle-first-look/ 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.
vermilingua 4y ago
Finally, plasteel.
photochemsyn 4y ago
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"
- kukx 4y ago
  > 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.
ajmurmann 4y ago
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.
- oxfeed65261 4y ago
  “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.
  - ajmurmann 4y ago
    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.
crate_barre 4y ago
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?
_0w8t 4y ago
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.
- alex_young 4y ago
  > 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.
cbracketdash 4y ago
Title should be, "MIT Engineers Create New Material Stronger Than Steel, Light as Plastic, and More Expensive than Gold"
- Dlanv 4y ago
  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
- robbedpeter 4y ago
  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.
- high_byte 4y ago
  and the first iphone cost about... idk, $10m in R&D?
cendyne 4y ago
I wonder what kind of efficiencies can be gained by swapping out metal for this in EV vehicles
- throwaway1777 4y ago
  Why only in EVs? Gas and hybrid vehicles could benefit also

110 points by leothekim 4y ago

Karliss 4y ago

Can anyone explain why having polymer connected in 2d sheets is better than connecting in all 3 dimensions?

AussieWog93 4y ago
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.
- Karliss 4y ago
  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.
  - abracadaniel 4y ago
    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.
- adrian_b 4y ago
  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.
elif 4y ago
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.
Gatsky 4y ago
Maybe a self-assembled 3D lattice would have some disorder due to the extra degree of freedom which translates to structural weakness.
- adrian_b 4y ago
  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.

riazrizvi 4y ago

This sounds like it should be headline news, a much bigger deal than votes imply.

MeteorMarc 4y ago

There is also the micro plastics issue to solve, before widening the scope of plastic applications.

loudmax 4y ago
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.
- Verdex 4y ago
  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.
  - cromka 4y ago
    > 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.
    - donkarma 4y ago

zeroping 4y ago

I can't take this too seriously after the "stock video to illustrate the concept of a super strong cell phone" at the top.

dccoolgai 4y ago

Sounds like transparent aluminum.

alanwreath 4y ago
except that aluminum is a recyclable.
mrcartmeneses 4y ago
Ruby?

redleggedfrog 4y ago

kazinator 4y ago

Nylon fishing line is stronger than steel and light as plastic.

ARandomerDude 4y ago
...in tension.
- robonerd 4y ago
  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.
  - mrandish 4y ago
    Perhaps these materials scientists are in a friendly competition with the scientists behind all the "Scientists invent revolutionary new battery technology" headlines.
devenson 4y ago
false
Dlanv 4y ago
And is nylon able to form rigid 3 dimensional structures?
- robonerd 4y ago
  For some values of 'rigid', yes. Here's a bicycle made out of nylon: https://www.bikeradar.com/news/airbike-nylon-bicycle-first-look/ 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.

vermilingua 4y ago

Finally, plasteel.

photochemsyn 4y ago

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"

kukx 4y ago
> 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.

ajmurmann 4y ago

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.

oxfeed65261 4y ago
“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.
- ajmurmann 4y ago
  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.

crate_barre 4y ago

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?

_0w8t 4y ago

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.

alex_young 4y ago
> 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.

cbracketdash 4y ago

Title should be, "MIT Engineers Create New Material Stronger Than Steel, Light as Plastic, and More Expensive than Gold"

Dlanv 4y ago
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
robbedpeter 4y ago
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.
high_byte 4y ago
and the first iphone cost about... idk, $10m in R&D?

cendyne 4y ago

I wonder what kind of efficiencies can be gained by swapping out metal for this in EV vehicles

throwaway1777 4y ago
Why only in EVs? Gas and hybrid vehicles could benefit also