Researchers have built a sheet of nickel with nanoscale pores that make it as strong as titanium but four to five times lighter. High-performance golf clubs and airplane wings are made out of titanium, which is as strong as steel but about twice as light. These properties depend on the way a metal’s atoms are stacked, but random defects that arise in the manufacturing process mean that these materials are only a fraction as strong as they could theoretically be. Design and build new materials An architect, working on the scale of individual atoms, could design and build new materials that have even better strength-to-weight ratios. In a study published in ‘Nature Scientific Reports’, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Cambridge have done just that. They have built a sheet of nickel with nanoscale pores that make it as strong as titanium but four ...
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