MIT engineers, Caltech and Eth Zürich published a new study that investigates the “nanoarquites” materials designed using nanoscaral structures with stamping precisely. Researchers believe that the material could be promising for light armor, protective coatings, explosion shields and other impact resistant materials. The ultralight material is manufactured using nanometer-scale carbon struts that make the material very resistant and gives it a strong mechanical robustness.
The material was tested by firing it with microparticles at supersonic speeds. They discovered that the material prevented the miniature particles from being torn through it despite being thinner than the width of a human hair. According to the equipment, compared to steel, kevlar, aluminum and other comparable weight impact materials, the new material is more efficient to absorb impacts. The main investigator Carlos Portela says that the same amount of mass of the new material would be more efficient to stop a projectile than the same mass of Kevlar.
If the new material occurred on a large scale, it could be designed as lighter and harder than other materials of common use. Depending on how they are arranged, the nanoarquito material scale structures are modeled with unique properties, such as exceptional lightness and recovery capacity. Portela says that researchers only know the response of these materials in a slow deformation regime. A lot of practical use is hypotheses to be in applications from the real world where nothing is slowly deformed.
The team of him wanted to study the materials under faster deformation conditions, as with high-speed impacts. In Caltech, they manufactured a nanoarquito material using the lithograph of two photons. This technique uses a high-power laser for solidifying microscopic structures in a photosensitive resin. The researchers built a repetition pattern known as a tetrakaidecahedro.
After pattern of that structure, the researchers washed the remaining resin. Next, they placed the structure in a high temperature vacuum oven to convert the carbon polymer, resulting in an ultralight and architectural carbon material. To test the material under extreme deformation, the equipment conducted a microparticle impact experiment in MIT using laser-induced particle impact tests. For this test, 14 micron silicon oxide particles were used. The equipment adjusted the particles at speeds of 40 to 1100 meters per second, noting that any supersonic thing is greater than 340 meters per second. The experiments show that the material can absorb a lot of energy with the particles that can not go through the material.