Researchers Create World’s Lightest Material

Researchers at Hamburg University of Technology and the University of Kiel have created a new material which has a density so low that you could say it barely even exists.

For many years, the material aerogel was the lightest, least dense material ever created by man, before its title was usurped by a metallic lattice structure. Now though, there is a new, even lighter, less dense material which has been named aerographite.

Aerographite has a density of 0.2 milligrams per cubic centimeter, the metallic lattice structure which is the next lightest material has a density of 0.9 milligrams per cubic meter – that is way heavier!!

Despite the fact that its density is so low that it might as well be thin air, aerographite is anything but fragile and has incredibly impressive structural properties. It can be compressed to 1,000 times smaller than its original size, and then when you release the pressure it will just spring back to how it was! It can also support up to 40,000 times more than its own weight!
The researchers who created it think that it might be good for “electrode materials for the increasing demand of batteries and high surface area supercapacitor materials.”

I reckon it looks a lot like the webbing that Spiderman shoots out of his wrists when he is scaling tall buildings!

Read about Aerographite here.

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