Chinese scientists have discovered a foam-like material that is as light as the balloon and as strong as a metal. This substance that has been dubbed as a super material could be developed only for military use. This discovery was reported by the South China Morning Post on September 23, 2015.
This super material that seems like foam was created by forming tiny tubes of ephemera (graphene) into a cellular structure. This structure is as stable as the cellular structure of the diamond. This study was led by the researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’Shanghai Institute of Ceramics.
It is 207 times stronger than steel material and can withstand a weight of forty thousand (40,000) times its own without bending. It is also able to conduct heat and electricity with very high efficiency.
The high resilience allows the elements in the material to get squeezed at just five percent of its original size and then return to its shape.
A graphene foam piece survived the impact of a blow that had a force of over 14,500 pounds per square inch. This pressure rivals that of the pressure experienced at the deepest part of the world’s ocean (36,000 feet in depth) in the Mariana Tech, located off the coast of Guam.
The research time was also able to find that this newly created material is able to absorb more external shocks than any reported graphene materials. As a result, the property of this material can be used as a cushion for a bulletproof vest or a shock-absorbing armor for tanks as indicated by the study.