New material promises improved light-weight body armour

Supported by DARPA, the nanoscale material could also find applications that require lightweight, flexible and tough materials. The study is detailed in Science. Madison Bardot, a PhD candidate in Dichtel’s laboratory and IIN Ryan Fellow, is the study’s first author.

The study marks several firsts in its field: it is the first 2D mechanically interlocked polymer, and it contains 100 trillion mechanical bonds per 1cm2, which is the highest density of mechanical bonds ever achieved. The researchers produced this material using a new, highly efficient and scalable polymerisation process.

“We made a completely new polymer structure,” said Northwestern’s William Dichtel, the study’s corresponding author. “It’s similar to chainmail in that it cannot easily rip because each of the mechanical bonds has a bit of freedom to slide around. If you pull it, it can dissipate the applied force in multiple directions. And if you want to rip it apart, you would have to break it in many, many different places. We are continuing to explore its properties and will probably be studying it for years.”