Penn Engineer's 'Metallic Wood' Has the Strength of Titanium and the Density of Water
High-performance golf clubs and airplane wings are made out of titanium, which is as strong as steel but about twice as light. These properties depend on the way a metal's atoms are stacked, but random defects that arise in the manufacturing process mean that these materials are only a fraction as strong as they could theoretically be. An architect, working on the scale of individual atoms, could design and build new materials that have even better strength-to-weight ratios.
In a new study published in Nature Scientific Reports [open, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-36901-3], researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and Applied Science, the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and the University of Cambridge have done just that. They have built a sheet of nickel with nanoscale pores that make it as strong as titanium but four to five times lighter.
The empty space of the pores, and the self-assembly process in which they're made, make the porous metal akin to a natural material, such as wood.
And just as the porosity of wood grain serves the biological function of transporting energy, the empty space in the researchers' "metallic wood" could be infused with other materials. Infusing the scaffolding with anode and cathode materials would enable this metallic wood to serve double duty: a plane wing or prosthetic leg that's also a battery.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday February 01 2019, @08:16PM (1 child)
It dulled my drill bit
I could not bend it either
I have a couple pieces of sheet that were given to me by an Air Force machinist
It looks just like sheet aluminum. Last I mentioned this here someone ask “How did they form it into sheets?”
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday February 02 2019, @06:41AM
I machine bone plates from it every day. You just need the right tooling.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek