Researchers also note that the new materials devised could be applied to satellites, cars, space suits and shuttles, basically everything that might take an impact.
Military armor progressed from steel plates to kevlar (ceramic) plates on the basis that lighter, less bulky materials can and should do the job of their heavier counterparts.
Now a new piece of research out of MIT and Rice University suggests that military body armor can be as thin as several nanometers, and proportionately lighter. For those who don’t know (I didn’t), current cutting edge body armor is approximately 6 pounds and 1 inch thick — and there are 25.5 million nanometers in an inch.
Now six pounds doesn’t seem like much, but double it to 12 for front and back plates, and then add in all the other gear Marines and soldiers carry in combat, and the military is looking for anywhere it can to cut some weight (usually from the Marines themselves).
Researchers for a long time postulated that by, on an atomic level, layering slivers of lightweight composite material, each only a nanometer thick, you could create a hyperdurable, superlightweight, razor thin material that could stop bullets.
Only problem is there was no way to test it.
David Chandler of the MIT News Office reports:
via Business Insider