“Researchers have developed a highly robust material with an extremely low density by constructing a structure using DNA and subsequently coating it in glass.”
“I am a big fan of Iron Man movies, and I have always wondered how to create a better armor for Iron Man. It must be very light for him to fly faster. It must be very strong to protect him from enemies’ attacks. Our new material is five times lighter but four times stronger than steel. So, our glass nanolattices would be much better than any other structural materials to create an improved armor for Iron Man.”
im just glad someone is doing the real research
You won’t find that level of detail in typical articles, because they are intended for the general public and are intended to be an overview that a layman can comprehend.
However, the paper itself, which the article links to, has more detail including deformation testing.
I told myself I wouldn’t read unrelated papers at work, but here we are. :P Yeah, as expected, the actual paper is way more informative about the structural properties, and about the limitations. (Difficulty fabricating larger samples without voids, said voids resulting in much lower strengths and much less plasticity, uncertain tensile strength, etc.) Fascinatingly though, (at least to me, not having known the details about DNA based metamaterials :P) the details of the properties should be tunable by way of changing the DNA lattice structure. Which makes it a two-part engineering problem, figuring out how to manufacture it at scale, and determining optimal lattice structures for different applications. Definitely exciting, and will be big once we figure these things out.
But that’s not really what I was talking about. While I get that this is an article geared to laymen/the general public, I do think we should be holding science communication to a higher standard. What was discovered is exciting, but we don’t know how it can be used yet, or if it will ever be practical to do so. Overview is fine, I’d just like some more qualifiers and less speculation. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like some more care would do a lot to improve overall scientific literacy and trust in the scientific community. /shurg
