Did I Read That Correctly?

a plastics stronger than steel!

images courtesy of MIT the materials yield strength, or the force it takes to break it, is twice that of steel, although it has only about one-sixth of the material density, making it light, dubbed 2DPA-1, the material is light and mouldable like plastic but has a strength and resistance that the researchers behind the project liken to steel and bulletproof glass, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineers envision 2DPA-1 being used in the near future as a coating to enhance the durability of objects, and eventually as a structural material, "We don't usually think of plastics as being something that you could use to support a building, but with this material, you can enable new things," said MIT chemical engineering professor Michael Strano. "It has very unusual properties."

2DPA-1 is a polymer, a category of substance that encompasses all kinds of plastics, but whereas all other polymers grow in one-dimensional chains, with new molecules being added onto their ends, 2DPA-1 grows in two dimensions, forming a sheet called a polyaramide, "Instead of making a spaghetti-like molecule, we can make a sheet-like molecular plane, where we get molecules to hook themselves together in two dimensions," Strano said, it is this two-dimensional quality that gives 2DPA-1 its strength, by eliminating the gaps that exist between polymer chains in other plastics, the engineers synthesised 2DPA-1 using a new polymerisation process that happens spontaneously in the right chemical solution, they have published their findings in a paper in the journal Nature. because of the material's closed molecular structure compared to other plastics, it is impermeable to water and gases, so it offers an extremely high degree of protection from oxidation, rust or rot, "This kind of barrier coating could be used to protect metal in cars and other vehicles, or steel structures," said Strano, another promising quality of 2DPA-1 is that it can be easily made in large quantities, this means that unlike with some recent wonder materials, such as graphene, it should be easy to scale up manufacturing outside of the laboratory, the MIT researchers made their 2DPA-1 in beakers, but to make the plastic in large quantities, they say you would simply need to increase the amount of starting materials, similar to other plastics, 2DPA-1 is manufactured at room temperature, so it doesn't require vast amounts of heat, what an amazing appliance of science!