New Supermaterial: As Strong as Steel and as Light as Styrofoam

Today in material science news we have a report from [German Science Guy] about a new supermaterial which is as strong as steel and as light as Styrofoam! A supermaterial …read more

May 28, 2025 - 11:30

New Supermaterial: As Strong as Steel and as Light as Styrofoam

Today in material science news we have a report from [German Science Guy] about a new supermaterial which is as strong as steel and as light as Styrofoam!

A supermaterial is a type of material that possesses remarkable physical properties, often surpassing traditional materials in strength, conductivity, or other characteristics. Graphene, for example, is considered a supermaterial because it is extremely strong, lightweight, and has excellent electrical conductivity.

This new supermaterial has been developed by researchers from Canada and South Korea, and it has remarkably high strength and remarkably low weight. Indeed this new material achieved the compressive strength of carbon steels (180-360 MPa) with the density of Styrofoam (125-215 kg m^-3).

One very important implication of the existence of such material is that it might lead to a reduction in transport costs if the material can be used to build vehicles such as airplanes and automobiles. For airplanes we could save up to 10 gallons per pound (80 liters per kilogram) per year, where a typical airplane weighs in at more than one million pounds.

To engineer the new material the researchers employed two methods: the Finite Element Method (FEM) and Bayesian optimization. Technically these optimized lattices are manufactured using two-photon polymerization (2PP) nanoscale additive manufacturing with pyrolysis to produce carbon nanolattices with an average strut diameter of 300 and 600 nm.

If you have an interest in material science, you might also like to read about categorizing steel or the science of coating steel.

Thanks to [Stephen Walters] for letting us know about this one on the tips line.