Researchers have developed what they are billing as the world’s lightest material. With a density of 0.9 mg/cc, it is about one hundred times lighter than Styrofoam™. 

The new material redefines the limits of lightweight materials because of its unique “micro-lattice” cellular architecture, they say - consists of 99.99 percent air by designing the 0.01 percent solid at the nanometer, micron and millimeter scales.  The material’s architecture allows unprecedented mechanical behavior for a metal, including complete recovery from compression exceeding 50 percent strain and extraordinarily high energy absorption.

“The trick is to fabricate a lattice of interconnected hollow tubes with a wall thickness 1,000 times thinner than a human hair,” said lead author Dr. Tobias Schaedler of  HRL Laboratories.


The new metal is 99.9 percent air and so light that it can sit atop dandelion fluff without damaging it. Credit: Dan Little, HRL Laboratories LLC

Developed for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the novel material could be used for battery electrodes and acoustic, vibration or shock energy absorption.

“Materials actually get stronger as the dimensions are reduced to the nanoscale,” explained UC Irvine mechanical and aerospace engineer Lorenzo Valdevit. “Combine this with the possibility of tailoring the architecture of the micro-lattice and you have a unique cellular material.”

Their findings appeared in the Nov. 18 issue of Science.