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posted by martyb on Friday November 09 2018, @07:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the I[m-waiting-for-it-to-be-transparent,-too dept.

Penn Engineers Develop Ultrathin, Ultralight 'Nanocardboard'

[A] team of Penn Engineers has demonstrated a new material they call "nanocardboard," an ultrathin equivalent of corrugated paper cardboard. A square centimeter of nanocardboard weighs less than a thousandth of a gram and can spring back into shape after being bent in half.

Nanocardboard is made out of an aluminum oxide film with a thickness of tens of nanometers, forming a hollow plate with a height of tens of microns. Its sandwich structure, similar to that of corrugated cardboard, makes it more than ten thousand times as stiff as a solid plate of the same mass.

Nanocardboard's stiffness-to-weight ratio makes it ideal for aerospace and microrobotic applications, where every gram counts. In addition to unprecedented mechanical properties, nanocardboard is a supreme thermal insulator, as it mostly consists of empty space.

Future work will explore an intriguing phenomenon that results from a combination of properties: shining a light on a piece of nanocardboard allows it to levitate. Heat from the light creates a difference in temperatures between the two sides of the plate, which pushes a current of air molecules out through the bottom.

Nanocardboard as a nanoscale analog of hollow sandwich plates (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-06818-6) (DX)


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  • (Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday November 09 2018, @10:07AM (2 children)

    by PiMuNu (3823) on Friday November 09 2018, @10:07AM (#759793)

    Cheaper than the latest round of Eurofighter (or US equivalent)?

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Friday November 09 2018, @12:28PM (1 child)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 09 2018, @12:28PM (#759819) Journal

    Certainly more expensive than the Wagyu porterhouse I had last weekend (point: comparing the cost of nanostructured aluminium oxide and the steak has as much relevance as comparing the same with the cost of fighter planes**).

    A valid comparison:
    - Eurofighter - double engine, started in 1982, total development programme cost £37B and the entire Eurofighter fleet achieved over 200,000 flight hours in Sep 2013 with combat operation missions under its belt
    - F35 - single engine, started in 1992, estimated cost to $1.46T for the entire life of the project by 2070, development still not ready in 2016 (engine redesign) and there may be other surprises requiring redesign today and, yes!, the entire worldwide fleet of F35 scored exactly 3 combat missions: 2 by Israelis in May 2018 and 1 by US in Sep 2018.

    ---
    **
    If you think that the characteristics of a single nanosheet scale proportionally if you stack more of them - so that the Al-oxide nanonsheets can be use to build fighter planes, let me give you an example.
    You know about how wonderful graphene is [graphenea.com]: high electrical conductivity (with electrons and holes having zero effective mass), "strongest material ever discovered, with an ultimate tensile strength of 130,000,000,000 Pascals".
    Well, stack some million of graphene sheets one on top of the other and what you get is graphite. You know, the stuff the pencil lead is made of - decent but not extraordinary conductivity, don't ever think of building something that requires high mechanical strength or flexibility.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday November 12 2018, @11:24AM

      by PiMuNu (3823) on Monday November 12 2018, @11:24AM (#760867)

      I agree, but I think you missed my point. Sure, this stuff can be pretty expensive, but then some of the applications that are relevant are also expensive.

      I make no comment as to whether it can be scaled appropriately (and so on).