If you thought air was the lightest thing in the world, researchers in Germany have cooked up a recipe to beat that claim. Meet Aerographite, officially the lightest material in the world, created by German scientists from Kiel University and Hamburg University of Technology. Among the various possible applications for Aerographite, there’s a great chance it will revolutionize the future of batteries and wearable computing (think invisibility cloaks!).
According to press release, weighing at 0.2 mg per cubic centimetre Aerographite is six times lighter than air and over four times lighter than the previously heralded lightest material in the world. Consisting of a network of three-dimensional carbon nanotubes, Aerographite is not only lighter than air and 75 times lighter than Styrofoam (closed-cell extruded polystyrene foam), it’s also a lot stronger.
Professor Rainer Adelung of Kiel University describes the construction process, “Think of the Aerographite as an ivy-web, which winds itself around a tree. And than take away the tree.” What remains is the lightest material in the world.
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