The possibilities this could bring are intriguing ... and perhaps endless.
A team of UCLA researchers, from the University's Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, have announced that they have created a new ultra-strong, but still lightweight metal.
The metal, which UCLA researchers report has an extremely high stiffness-to-weight ratio, consists of "magnesium infused with a dense and even dispersal of ceramic silicon carbide nanoparticles."
UCLA researchers say this metal could be used to make lighter cars, airplanes and even spacecrafts, subsequently improving their fuel efficiency rates as well. They add that the metal could also be used for mobile and biomedical devices.
The research team created the ultra-strong, yet lightweight material by manipulating nanoparticles in molten metals.
"It's been proposed that nanoparticles could really enhance the strength of metals without damaging their plasticity, especially light metals like magnesium, but no groups have been able to disperse ceramic nanoparticles in molten metals until now," said Xiaochun Li, a principal investigator on the research team and UCLA Raytheon Chair in Manufacturing Engineering, with the research published in the journal Nature. "With an infusion of physics and materials processing, our method paves a new way to enhance the performance of many different kinds of metals by evenly infusing dense nanoparticles to enhance the performance of metals to meet energy and sustainability challenges in today's society."
He later added: "The results we obtained so far are just scratching the surface of the hidden treasure for a new class of metals with revolutionary properties and functionalities."
As with any potentially-breakthrough research findings, though, it remains to be seen how soon this metal could be put into production and across a massive scale for everyday use.
