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  • We were able to make the world's lightest material. The entire structure was basically 99.99% air.

  • [Boeing Short Films]

  • [LIGHTEST. METAL. EVER]

  • The microlattice is a 3D open-cellular polymer structure and can often be compared

  • to something like a bone structure. In your bone structures, the outside of your bone

  • is very rigid, but on the inside it's actually mostly hollow where you basically have an open-cellular structure

  • so they aren't easily crushed yet lightweight at the same time.

  • [Microlattice is one of the strongest and lightest materials known to science.]

  • If you want to look at just properties in general, then one would be compression

  • in the sense of energy absorption, and then the second would be lightweight

  • in terms of having very hollow tubes. So let's say you have the egg drop challenge

  • that, you know, a lot of students have in school, and they need to drop an egg from 25 stories

  • and protect that egg. They would probably wrap it in many, many layers of bubble wrap

  • and then drop it and hope for the best. But what we can do is back design the microlattice

  • to absorb the force that the egg feels. So instead of having an egg that's wrapped in 3 feet

  • of bubble wrap, now you have a much smaller package that your egg can sit in.

  • One of the main applications that we've been looking into is structural components

  • for aerospace. So when I get on an airplane and I'm leaning against the sidewall panel

  • and putting my luggage in the stow bin or I'm walking along the floor panels,

  • I think the microlattice could be used in one of these applications.

  • In the future, the material can help Boeing to save a lot of weight

  • to make the airplanes more fuel efficient.

  • It's really exciting to be able to work with things that we make that can eventually go into a real product

  • that a lot of users can interact with.

We were able to make the world's lightest material. The entire structure was basically 99.99% air.

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