Skip to main content

Scientists produce world’s lightest material ever


ultralight-aerogel-on-cherry-blossom-300
It’s 100 times lighter than a polystyrene foam coffee cup, and has the capacity to soak up environmental pollutants such as toluene and crude oil.

Scientists from Zhejiang University in China have invented an ultralight carbon aerogel that has broken the record for the world’s lightest material.
An aerogel is a synthetic, porous ultralight material derived from a gel, in which the liquid component of the gel has been replaced with a gas. This new aerogel is 100 times lighter than a polystyrene foam coffee cup, and it has a large capacity for soaking up environmental pollutants such as toluene and crude oil. The research was published on February 18, 2013 in the journal Advanced Materials.
The ultralight carbon aerogel was produced when scientists freeze-dried a gel solution of carbon nanotubes and graphene. Because the aerogel contains many pores filled with air, it is exceptionally light and has a density of only 0.16 milligrams per cubic centimeter. As of 2013, the aerogel is the world’s lightest material ever produced.
ultralight-aerogel-on-cherry-blossom-500
Ultralight carbon aerogel resting on a cherry blossom. Image appears courtesy of Shaoqing Lu,Zhejiang University.
Previous records for the world’s lightest material were held by American scientists in 2011 (0.9 mg/cm3) and German scientists in 2012 (0.18 mg/cm3).
Professor Chao Gao, a scientist affiliated with the Department of Polymer Science and Engineering at Zhejiang University in China, commented on the findings in a news release. He said:
Carbon aerogel is expected to play an important role in pollution control such as oil spill control, water purification and even air purification.
The scientists compared the absorption capacity of the new ultralight carbon aerogel to several commercially available products and found that the aerogel was seven times better at soaking up organic solvents such as ethanol, crude oil, motor oil, toluene and vegetable oil. Also promising was the freeze-drying process, which was able to produce the aerogel much more efficiently than traditional production methods.
Besides using the ultralight carbon aerogel for environmental remediation purposes, the scientists are hoping to conduct additional research in the future to see how well the aerogel might perform in other engineering applications including energy insulation and sound proofing.
gao-chao-zhejiang-university-500
Professor Gao Chao’s research team in a lab at Zhejiang University. Image appears courtesy of Shaoqing Lu, Zhejiang University.
Co-authors of the study included Haiyan Sun and Zhen Xu. The research was funded in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Qianjiang Talent Foundation of Zhejiang.
Bottom line: Scientists from Zhejiang University in China have invented an ultralight carbon aerogel that has broken the record for the world’s lightest material. The aerogel has a density of only 0.16 milligrams per cubic centimeter and a large capacity for soaking up environmental pollutants such as toluene and crude oil. The research was published on February 18, 2013 in the journal Advanced Materials.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Einstein’s Lost Theory Describes a Universe Without a Big Bang

Einstein with Edwin Hubble, in 1931, at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, looking through the lens of the 100-inch telescope through which Hubble discovered the expansion of the universe in 1929.  Courtesy of the Archives, Calif Inst of Technology. In 1917, a year after Albert Einstein’s  general theory of relativity  was published—but still two years before he would become the international celebrity we know—Einstein chose to tackle the  entire universe . For anyone else, this might seem an exceedingly ambitious task—but this was Einstein. Einstein began by applying his  field equations of gravitation  to what he considered to be the entire universe. The field equations were the mathematical essence of his general theory of relativity, which extended Newton’s theory of gravity  to realms where speeds approach that of light and masses are very large. But his math was better than he wanted to believe—...
Post a Comment
Read more

There’s a Previously Undiscovered Organ in Your Body, And It Could Explain How Cancer Spreads

Ever heard of the interstitium? No? That’s OK, you’re not alone  —  scientists hadn’t either. Until recently. And, hey, guess what  —  you’ve got one! The interstitium is your newest organ. Scientists identified it for the first time because they are better able to observe living tissues at a microscopic scale, according to a recent study published  in  Scientific Reports , Scientists had long believed that connective tissue surrounding our organs was a thick, compact layer. That’s what they saw when they looked at it in the lab, outside the body, at least. But in a routine endoscopy (exploration of the gastrointestinal tract), a micro camera revealed something unexpected: When observed in a living body, the connective tissue turned out to be “an open, fluid-filled space supported by a lattice made of thick collagen bundles,” pathologist and study author Neil Theise  told  Research Gate . This network of channels is present throughout ...
Post a Comment
Read more

First light-bending calculator designed with metamaterials

Exotic materials that bend light in extreme ways could be used to perform complex mathematical operations, creating a new kind of analogue computer. Tools for manipulating light waves have taken off in recent years thanks to the development of  metamaterials . These materials have complex internal structures on scales smaller than the wavelength of the light they interact with, and so they produce unusual effects. Most famously, metamaterials promise to deliver " invisibility cloaks " that can route light around an object, making it seem to disappear. Nader Engheta  at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and his colleagues decided to explore a different use for metamaterials, one that adapts the  old idea of analogue computing . Today's digital computers are based on electrical switches that are either on or off. But before these machines were analogue computers based on varying electrical or mechanical properties. The  slide rule  is one example...
Post a Comment
Read more