‘Impossible’ material is twice as strong as steel and as light as plastic – and could transform phones and cars

Scientists have created a new material that is twice as strong as steel but as light as plastic.

The material, previously thought impossible, is able to withstand up to six times more force than bulletproof glass and is twice as strong as steel.

What’s more, it can be easily made in large quantities, thanks to a new breakthrough. And it could transform the way we make things such as cars and phones, or building structures such as bridges, its creators say.

Objects could be coated in the material to allow them to be extra strong. Or whole, large things could be built out of it.

“We don’t usually think of plastics as being something that you could use to support a building, but with this material, you can enable new things,” said Michael Strano, the senior author on the new study. “It has very unusual properties and we’re very excited about that.”

The MIT scientists behind. the breakthrough used a new polymerisation process to create the material. All plastics are polymers, which are made up of chains of building blocks called monomers.

New molecules can be added to the end of those chains, growing them, and they can then be shaped into 3D objects. That includes plastic items such as bottles and many of the other products that surround us.

Scientists have long thought that it might be possible to make those polymers grow into a 2D sheet, and produce strong and light materials. But decades have work have only suggested that it is impossible create such sheets.

In the new study, however, scientists were able to make a 2D sheet called a polyaramide. They can then be made into discs, which are then stacked on top of each other – that makes for very stable and strong, ut still light, materials.

“Instead of making a spaghetti-like molecule, we can make a sheet-like molecular plane, where we get molecules to hook themselves together in two dimensions,” Strano says. “This mechanism happens spontaneously in solution, and after we synthesise the material, we can easily spin-coat thin films that are extraordinarily strong.”

All engineers need to do to make more of the material is add more of the ingredients.

The researchers found that it can take between four ands times as much force than bulletproof glass to deform the material. It will take twice as much force to break the new material as it does with steel.

Despite that, it is only about one-sixth as dense as steel.

Another, bonus feature of the material is that it is impermeable to gas. That means that other things could be coated with the material, making them resistant to damage from the world.

“This could allow us to create ultrathin coatings that can completely prevent water or gases from getting through,” said Professor Strano, who works at MIT. “This kind of barrier coating could be used to protect metal in cars and other vehicles, or steel structures.”

The breakthrough is reported in a new paper, ‘‘Irreversible synthesis of an ultrastrong two-dimensional polymeric material’, published in Nature today.