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Mar 18, 2016

You can now 3D print the world’s lightest material – graphene aerogel

Posted by in categories: 3D printing, materials

YES PLEASE.

It’s 7.5 times lighter than air, and a cubic metre of the stuff weighs just 160 grams. It’s 12 percent lighter than the second lightest material in the world – aerographite – and you can balance a few cubic centimetres of the stuff on a dandelion head. Water is about 1,000 times as dense.

Yep, graphene aerogel is about as cool as it gets. And while silica aerogel (pictured above) is the most commonly used and studied type of aerogel, as of 2013, graphene aerogel has held the record of being the lightest material on Earth. And producing it is about to get a whole lot easier because scientists have just figured out how to 3D print it.

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