On its website, CBC News (7/19) reports, "A group of German scientists say they have created a porous carbon material that is 75 times lighter than Styrofoam and four times lighter than the lightest man-made material to date. Researchers at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg (TUHH) and Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel call the new material Aerographite."
The NBC News (7/18, Roach) "Future of Tech" blog reported, "It weighs 0.2 milligrams per cubic centimeter, making it the lightest material in the world, according to the researchers whose creation was announced Tuesday in the journal Advanced Materials. That's four times lighter than the hitherto-lightest material in the world, a nickel material presented about six months ago called microlattice." The researchers "believe the material will be useful as an electrode in lithium-ion batteries used in today's electric vehicles, allowing weight reduction and thus more miles per charge. Other potential uses range from electronics for aviation and satellites to water purification."
The Atlantic Wire (7/19, Wagner) also covers the story.
Here are some quotes from the original communication:
Aerographite: Ultra Lightweight, Flexible Nanowall, Carbon Microtube Material with Outstanding Mechanical Performance
"Here we present a novel cellular material called Aerographite (density < 200 μg cm^ −3 ), more than 4 times lighter than the Ni microlattices, which were up to now the most lightweight materials. Despite its low density it can be fabricated in various macroscopic shapes in the order of several cubic centimeters."
"Aerographite is designed to be most lightweight but extremely robust to bear strong deformations. These challenging material properties are achived by Aerographite’s hirachical design which is realized by a novel single-step cvd sythesis based on freely adjustable ZnO networks."
"Cyclic loading and unloading with Li ions (batteries) easily leads to volume changes of 200–400%. [ 9 ] Corresponding stresses are a major point of limited lifetime performance, [ 9 – 11 ] thus introduction of direct interconnections are advantageous."
"A closer look reveals that this variant of Aerographite consists of a seamless interconnected network of closed shell micro tubes, a structure that provides ultra-low densities of ≈ 2 mg cm^ −3 already lower than the lightest reported aerogels."
"...the material is completely black and optically opaque despite its extreme low density"
Does this mean we can now attempt the long awaited sub 5oz hp 5’ 5" surfboard ?..good news for some , I suppose…the implications for light-weight lithium-ion car batteries could well be a game changer !..a step in the right direction at the very least.