Graphene Aerogel Takes World's Lightest Material Crown

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Graphene Aerogel Takes World's Lightest Material Crown

Posted by samzenpus on Monday March 25, 2013 @02:00AM from the I-don't-feel-a-thing dept.

cylonlover writes "Not even a year after it claimed the title of the world's lightest material, aerographite has been knocked off its crown by a new aerogel made from graphene. Created by a research team from China's Zhejiang University in the Department of Polymer Science and Engineering lab headed by Professor Gao Chao, the ultra-light aerogel has a density of just 0.16 mg/cm3, which is lower than that of helium and just twice that of hydrogen."

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Density calculation? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2013-03-25 02:08 · Score: 3, Interesting

I'm assuming that the 'density' figure given is a 'weight of graphene in a given volume' one, rather than one that includes the gasses occupying the pores/cells of the material?
It would be quite shocking indeed if something largely saturated in nitrogen and oxygen were less dense than helium...
1. Re:Density calculation? by Joce640k · 2013-03-25 02:17 · Score: 2
  
  I suspect you're right.
  OTOH, how strong is it? Graphene is supposed to be tough stuff. If it could be used to trap hydrogen and keep it from burning it might be very useful (eg. replace all water-ships with airships).
  
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2. Re:Density calculation? by bill_mcgonigle · 2013-03-25 02:26 · Score: 2
  
  a functional pseudo-vacuum balloon that doesn't collapse under atmospheric pressure.
  Now that would change the world.
  
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3. Re:Density calculation? by ShanghaiBill · 2013-03-25 03:22 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  OTOH, how strong is it? Graphene is supposed to be tough stuff.
  I have no idea how strong graphene areogel is, but I have handled silica aerogel and it is extremely fragile. It it difficult to handle it without accidentally fracturing it. My daughter used a disk of aerogel as in insulator in her school science project last year, and we had to buy three disks ($30 each) because they kept breaking. I hope graphene aerogel is stonger.
4. Re:Density calculation? by TheRaven64 · 2013-03-25 04:13 · Score: 2
  
  Not really. The problem is in the sealing. If you had a membrane that could withstand the pressure of air on one side, vacuum on the other, and not allow the air to seep in, without adding more than a negligible amount of weight, then you could just use the same material to make hydrogen balloons.
  
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5. Re:Density calculation? by Lorens · 2013-03-25 05:02 · Score: 2
  
  TFA says it's "very strong and extremely elastic, bouncing back after being compressed". The application they project is swabbing up oil spills, but there have to be lots and lots of other applications out there.
6. Re:Density calculation? by nedlohs · 2013-03-25 05:53 · Score: 2
  
  If it's rigid you don't need any hydrogen, that's the point.
  1 liter of *nothing* is lighter than 1 liter of hydrogen. We don't have a material (that I know of anyway) that can both support the 1 atmosphere pressure difference of the inside and the outside of a large enough to be useful surface area while also not weighing so much that it's pointless.
Aerogel vs. M&Ms by T-Bone-T · 2013-03-25 02:09 · Score: 2

I still remember the first time I learned about aerogel. The picture had a column of Aerogel about the size of a double-height coke can on one side of a balance and 3 M&Ms on the other side that weighed more.
1. Re:Aerogel vs. M&Ms by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2013-03-25 02:12 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  The insulative properties are also pretty dramatic. There is another picture floating around with some crayons in place of the flower. That little stunt might not work as well with carbon aerogels as it does with silica ones, though...
2. Re:Aerogel vs. M&Ms by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2013-03-25 03:02 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Given that all aerogels are extremely tenuous foams, I would strongly suspect that all of them are pretty good insulators(even if one were made of a very good conductor of heat, like silver, there is just so little solid and so much trapped-gas-pocket that good insulation is to be suspected). However, if the aerogel is made of a material that burns in oxygen, the same combination of a tiny amount of solid with plenty of gas probably results in a very swift burn once you get it started.
  I'd suspect that a carbon aerogel would be only slightly worse as an insulator than a silica one; but I wouldn't try taking a blowtorch to it(except to see what happens...)
Enter the new airship age ... by RichMan · 2013-03-25 02:11 · Score: 5, Insightful

Make a bag around it. Remove the air. We have an airship with the lift somewhere between H and He.
So how strong is the aerogel? How big a bag can we make and have it support atmospheric pressure on the other side? That will really determine the lift efficiency.
1. Re:Enter the new airship age ... by fnj · 2013-03-25 02:36 · Score: 2
  
  You still have the weather issues that make airships impractical.
  I'm sure all the operators who fly airships daily would be interested to hear why you think it's impractical to do what they are doing.
2. Re:Enter the new airship age ... by delt0r · 2013-03-25 04:52 · Score: 2
  
  Going to vacuum from either He or H gives very little extra lift. Air at STP is just a little over 1.1kg/m3, while H2 is about 100g and He is about 200g. So you get about 1kg of lift per m3. With vacuum you get, well about 1kg per m3.
  
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3. Re:Enter the new airship age ... by ShanghaiBill · 2013-03-25 04:55 · Score: 2
  
  Make a bag around it. Remove the air. We have an airship with the lift somewhere between H and He.
  Using a vacuum gives you little additional buoyancy. Air has a density of about 1.2 kg/m^3. Hydrogen has a density of about 0.09 kg/m^3. So a cubic meter of vacuum has a buoyancy of 1.2 kg/m^3, and a cubic meter of H has a buoyancy of 1.11 kg/m^3. So a vacuum will only give you about 8% more lift than using hydrogen, and about 16% more than using helium. The expense and hassle of maintaining a vacuum is unlikely to be worth the gain.
4. Re:Enter the new airship age ... by nedlohs · 2013-03-25 06:02 · Score: 2
  
  When something is described as "extremely elastic, bouncing back after being compressed" then it's unlikely to be all that rigid...
What ever happened to precision of speech? by Muad'Dave · 2013-03-25 02:11 · Score: 4, Informative

Obviously not 'lightest', but 'least dense'. Sheesh, editors - do your JOB! The /. title should be "Silly folk at Gizmag confuse mass with density when describing world's least dense solid.'

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1. Re:What ever happened to precision of speech? by Forty+Two+Tenfold · 2013-03-25 02:30 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Obviously the editors are not the least dense.
  
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Re:Density by RichMan · 2013-03-25 02:21 · Score: 5, Informative

The density is measured including its interior space. In reality the interior space is filled with air and its realtive weight is the carbon structure alone.
To make it float you would have to find a way to seal off the interior structure and remove the air from that.
Re:Density by Joce640k · 2013-03-25 02:25 · Score: 2, Informative

If the density's lower than that of helium, why isn't it floating away
Bad journalism ...
being repeated verbatim by an idiot slashdot submitters
then not being deleted by idiot slashdot editors
then being voted up in the firehose by equally stupid readers.
On a "tech" site, with three separate links in the editorial chain, you'd think that it would have been spotted, but nooooooo.

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Re:Density by Ellis+D.+Tripp · 2013-03-25 02:31 · Score: 2

Just to clarify, you would need to seal the outer surface, and pull a vacuum on the internal volume of the material. Then, assuming that the sealing coating didn't weigh too much, the stuff should float.

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Carbon is awesome by TheSkepticalOptimist · 2013-03-25 02:32 · Score: 2

Can be used to make the hardest or lightest stuff on the planet.
Carbon's reputation is however spoiled by a couple of Oxygen a-holes that like to latch on to it, stupid no good Oxygen.

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Re:Density by tom17 · 2013-03-25 02:34 · Score: 2

Why would it float in a vacuum?
Now that *WOULD* be magically ground breaking tech ;)
Re:I'd believe it if you added the word "solid" by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-25 02:42 · Score: 3, Funny

Vacuum is a gas in the eyes of Christian fundamentalists. Just like Atheism is a religion, not collecting stamps is a hobby, and off is a TV channel.
Re:I'd believe it if you added the word "solid" by mwvdlee · 2013-03-25 02:44 · Score: 3, Funny

I like "off"; there's less re-runs than the other channels.

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Brief Kings by lymond01 · 2013-03-25 03:00 · Score: 5, Funny

Graphene Aerogel Takes World's Lightest Material Crown
A crown should weigh heavy on a ruler's brow, lest he forget the weight of his responsibility.
I don't quite get it by wonkey_monkey · 2013-03-25 03:01 · Score: 4, Interesting

What makes this so different from, say, creating a hollow cube with some very fine polymer for the vertices, with the faces and interior remaining empty? If something's full of holes, is its density still measurable in a meaningful way? A battleship is less dense than water in this sense, but the material it's made from isn't.

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1. Re:I don't quite get it by Flere+Imsaho · 2013-03-25 09:39 · Score: 2
  
  And how do you make one dimensional graphene fibres?
  
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Re:I'd believe it if you added the word "solid" by Lorens · 2013-03-25 04:58 · Score: 3, Interesting

Well, it should be possible to make it less squishy (carbon makes diamonds, after all). Cover it with some other graphene variant in low pressure, and one just might manage to make a lighter-than-air solid. I'd avoid the torch, though.
Re:I'd believe it if you added the word "solid" by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-25 05:51 · Score: 3, Informative

This is why no one under the age of 32 today has any fundamental understanding of the English language. ... This is why they put their punctuation inside of quotation marks even when the punctuation is not part of the thing being quoted...
Funny, APA, MLA, and the Chicago Manual of Style all recommend putting the period inside the quotation at the end of the sentence even if the original quotation does not have a period. And my copy of the Chicago Manual of Style is older than 32 years. Not that I put much effort into writing random forum posts and I'm sure I make plenty of mistakes. But if one were to try to argue technically about what is the correct approach, at best you can argue it is a stylistic choice. Otherwise, you are going against what are essentially the authorities in many circles of writing.
Re:I'd believe it if you added the word "solid" by Martin+Blank · 2013-03-25 06:01 · Score: 3, Informative

The convention in the United States for decades has been to places periods inside the quotation marks. All others are based on the actual quote. The Chicago Manual of Style, as one of many, recommends this, but most guides point out that the British style placing anything not part of the quote outside of the quotation marks is acceptable but may be seen as unusual to American readers--of all ages.

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Re:I'd believe it if you added the word "solid" by X0563511 · 2013-03-25 06:09 · Score: 2

You are correct that I am a product of 1990's (and 2000's) US public schooling. Not everyone is born into wealth and able to be privately educated.
Despite your implication that my education was inferior, I am able to join a discussion and offer my opinion without attacking participants for little to no reason. I invite you to reflect on what that means in the context of your own education...

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Re:I'd believe it if you added the word "solid" by jbengt · 2013-03-25 06:29 · Score: 2

Thus when you say something is "lighter" than the atom hydrogen you are saying that an equal quantity of matter units has less mass.

Ridiculous.
Nobody said anything about graphene molecules having less mass than hydrogen atoms (except you).
What was said (in TFA) was that the graphene aerogel is lighter than helium, which has the plain meaning that a given volume of the aerogel has less mass than the same volume of hydrogen.
(BTW, hydrogen around the earth usually comes in the form of H2 molecules, not single atoms.)