Lighter & Stronger Than Steel

Researchers from the University of Connecticut and colleagues have created a highly durable, lightweight material by structuring DNA and then coating it in glass. The resulting product, characterized by its nanolattice structure, exhibits a unique combination of strength and low density, making it potentially useful in applications like vehicle manufacturing and body armor. (Artist’s concept.)






Researchers have developed a highly robust material with an extremely low density by constructing a structure using DNA and subsequently coating it in glass.

Materials possessing both strength and lightness have the potential to enhance everything from automobiles to body armor. But usually, the two qualities are mutually exclusive. 

However, researchers at the University of Connecticut, along with their collaborators, have now crafted an incredibly strong yet lightweight material. Surprisingly, they achieved this using two unexpected building blocks: DNA and glass.

“For the given density, our material is the strongest known,” says Seok-Woo Lee, a materials scientist at UConn. Lee and colleagues from UConn, Columbia University, and Brookhaven National Lab report the details on July 19 in Cell Reports Physical Science.

Strength is relative. Iron, for example, can take 7 tons of pressure per square centimeter. But it’s also very dense and heavy, weighing 7.8 grams/cubic centimeter. Other metals, such as titanium, are stronger and lighter than iron. 

And certain alloys combining multiple elements are even stronger. Strong, lightweight materials have allowed for lightweight body armor, better medical devices, and made safer, faster cars and airplanes.  READ MORE...

Molten Salt Battery & Energy

Close-up of the freeze-thaw battery developed by the PNNL team. 

Credit: Andrea Starr/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

During spring in the Pacific Northwest, meltwater from thawing snow rushes down rivers and the wind often blows hard. These forces spin the region’s many power turbines and generate a bounty of electricity at a time of mild temperatures and relatively low energy demand. But much of this seasonal surplus electricity—which could power air conditioners come summer—is lost because batteries cannot store it long enough.

Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), a Department of Energy national laboratory in Richland, Wash., are developing a battery that might solve this problem. In a recent paper published in Cell Reports Physical Science, they demonstrated how freezing and thawing a molten salt solution creates a rechargeable battery that can store energy cheaply and efficiently for weeks or months at a time. 

Such a capability is crucial to shifting the U.S. grid away from fossil fuels that release greenhouse gases and toward renewable energy. President Joe Biden has made it a goal to cut U.S. carbon emissions in half by 2030, which will necessitate a major ramp-up of wind, solar and other clean energy sources, as well as ways to store the energy they produce.

Most conventional batteries store energy as chemical reactions waiting to happen. When the battery is connected to an external circuit, electrons travel from one side of the battery to the other through that circuit, generating electricity. To compensate for the change, charged particles called ions move through the fluid, paste or solid material that separates the two sides of the battery. 

But even when the battery is not in use, the ions gradually diffuse across this material, which is called the electrolyte. As that happens over weeks or months, the battery loses energy. Some rechargeable batteries can lose almost a third of their stored charge in a single month.  READ MORE...