Engenheiros do MIT criam um material leve e revolucionário que é mais forte que o aço

MIT engineers create revolutionary lightweight material that's stronger than steel

The engineering community's quest to find stronger, yet lighter building materials that can increase structural durability in countless applications is never-ending, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has just made a breakthrough.

On February 2, MIT announced that chemical engineers have developed a new material that is “stronger than steel and as light as plastic” and can simply be mass-produced.

The material, called 2DPA-1, is described as a two-dimensional polymer that assembles into sheets. The researchers note that this is unlike all other polymers that assemble into “spaghetti-like” chains.

An MIT press release said the material could have applications in building materials or electronics as a lightweight, durable coating. Specific uses mentioned include coatings on automobile parts, cell phones, and structures such as bridges.

“We don't normally think of plastic as something that can be used to support a building, but with this material it is possible to make new things possible,” said Michael Strano, author of the MIT study on the new material. “It has very unusual properties and we are very excited about it.”

The study results were published on November 3 in the journal Nature . MIT researchers are currently awaiting two patents on the process used to make the material. This process involved a polymerization technique that allowed engineers to create a two-dimensional sheet, something MIT said had long been considered impossible but was a hypothesis.

“Instead of making a spaghetti-like molecule, we can make a sheet-like molecular plane, where we get the molecules to stick together in two dimensions,” Strano said. “This mechanism occurs spontaneously in solution, and after the material is synthesized, we can easily coat extraordinarily strong thin films.”

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