The newly developed materials with high strength can be used to build airplanes or automobiles, but their weight is lighter than air. A new class of light-weight ultralight materials aerogels developed by a group of MIT researchers and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) may have 10,000 times harder new materials than aerogels. One day will completely change the aerospace and automotive design industry.
Aerogels are the lightest known materials and have a density of only 0.16 mg/cm. Currently, aerogels can be used for insulating materials, the production of tennis racquets, or as a method of controlling oil leaks and use on the NASA Stardust collector, but it is very rare. New materials developed by MIT have artificial material properties and are not found in nature. The power of new materials comes from their geometry rather than their chemical composition. The new material can be used for projection micro-stereolithography, a form of desktop 3D printing technology, working on a microscopic level to create highly complex instruments. The research team believes that these materials will one day be used to make aircraft parts, automobiles and aerospace tools. In actual use, the final material will be 100 times stronger than the experimental version.