WHAT IS IT?
A team of chemical engineers at MIT have created a new material that they claim to be stronger than steel — but still as light as plastic.
If the science holds up, it could be a huge advancement in material sciences, potentially giving objects like car parts or cell phones an extraordinarily durable skin. The team is even going as far as to say that it can be easily mass produced.
WHY IMPORTANT
The result is an extremely strong and thin material dubbed 2DPA-1 that is between four and six times more resistant to deformation as bulletproof glass. It is also twice as difficult to break than steel, despite having only one-sixth of the density.
