University of Wisconsin–Madison engineers have created a nanofiber material that outperforms its widely used counterparts—including steel plates and Kevlar fabric—in protecting against high-speed projectile impacts.
Basically, it's better than bulletproof.
"Our nanofiber mats exhibit protective properties that far surpass other material systems at much lighter weight," says Ramathasan Thevamaran, a UW–Madison assistant professor of engineering physics who led the research.
He and his collaborators detailed the advance in a paper published recently in the journal ACS Nano.
To create the material, Thevamaran and postdoctoral researcher Jizhe Cai mixed multi-walled carbon nanotubes—carbon cylinders just one atom thick in each layer—with Kevlar nanofibers. The resulting nanofiber mats are superior at dissipating energy from the impact of tiny projectiles moving faster than the speed of sound.
The advance lays the groundwork for carbon nanotube use in lightweight, high-performance armor materials, for example, in bulletproof vests to better protect the wearer or in shields around spacecraft to mitigate damage from flying high-speed microdebris.
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