10 Interesting Futuristic Materials
1. Aerogel
Aerogel holds 15 entries in the Guinness Book of Records, more than any other material. Sometimes called "frozen smoke", aerogel is made by the supercritical drying of liquid gels of alumina, chromia, tin oxide, or carbon. It's 99.8% empty space, which makes it look semi-transparent. Aerogel is a fantastic insulator -- if you had a shield of aerogel, you could easily defend yourself from a flamethrower. It stops cold, it stops heat. You could build a warm dome on the Moon. Aerogels have unbelievable surface area in their internal fractal structures -- cubes of aerogel just an inch on a side may have an internal surface area equivalent to a football field. Despite its low density, aerogel has been looked into as a component of military armor because of its insulating properties.
2. Carbon nanotubes
Carbon nanotubes are long chains of carbon held together by the strongest bond in all chemistry, the sacred sp2 bond, even stronger than the sp3 bonds that hold together diamond. Carbon nanotubes have numerous remarkable physical properties, including ballistic electron transport (making them ideal for electronics) and so much tensile strength that they are the only substance that could be used to build a space elevator. The specific strength of carbon nanotubes is 48,000 kN·m/kg, the best of known materials, compared to high-carbon steel's 154 kN·m/kg. That's 300 times stronger than steel. You could build towers hundreds of kilometers high with it.
3. Metamaterials
"Metamaterial" refers to any material that gains its properties from structure rather than composition. Metamaterials have been used to create microwave invisibility cloaks, 2D invisibility cloaks, and materials with other unusual optical properties. Mother-of-pearl gets its rainbow color from metamaterials of biological origin. Some metamaterials have a negative refractive index, an optical property that may be used to create "superlenses" which resolve features smaller than the wavelength of light used to image them! This technology is called subwavelength imaging. Metamaterials would used in phased array optics, a technology that could render perfect holograms on a 2D display. These holograms would be so perfect that you could be standing 6 inches from the screen, looking into the "distance" with binoculars, and not even notice it's a hologram.
4. Bulk diamond
We're starting to lay down thick layers of diamond in CVD machines, hinting towards a future of bulk diamond machinery. Diamond is an ideal construction material -- it's immensely strong, light, made out of the widely available element carbon, nearly complete thermal conductivity, and has among the highest melting and boiling points of all materials. By introducing trace impurities, you can make a diamond practically any color you want. Imagine a jet, with hundreds of thousands of moving parts made of fine-tuned diamond machinery. Such a craft would be more powerful than today's best fighter planes in the way an F-22 is better than the Red Baron's Fokker Dr.I.
5. Bulk fullerenes
Diamonds may be strong, but aggregated diamond nanorods (what I call amorphous fullerene) are stronger. Amorphous fullerene has a isothermal bulk modulus of 491 gigapascals (GPa), compared to diamond's 442 GPa. As we see in the image, the nanoscale structure of the fullerene gives it a beautiful iridescent appearance. Fullerenes can be made substantially stronger than diamond, but for greater energy cost. After a "Diamond Age", we may eventually transition to a "Fullerene Age" as our technology gets even more sophisticated.
6. Amorphous metal
Amorphous metals, also called metallic glasses, consist of metal with a disordered atomic structure. They can be twice as strong as steel. Because of their disordered structure, they can disperse impact energy more effectively than a metal crystal, which has points of weakness. Amorphous metals are made by quickly cooling molten metal before it has a chance to align itself in a crystal pattern. Amorphous metals may the military's next generation of armor, before they adopt diamondoid armor in mid-century. On the green side of things, amorphous metals have electronic properties that improve the efficiency of power grids by as much as 40%, saving us thousands of tons of fossil fuel emissions.
7. Superalloys
A superalloy is a generic term for a metal that can operate at very high temperatures, up to about 2000 °F (1100 °C). They are popular for use in the superhot turbine areas of jet engines. They are used for more advanced oxygen-breathing designs, such as the ramjet and scramjet. When we're flying through the sky in hypersonic craft, we'll have superalloys to thank for it.
8. Metal foam
Metal foam is what you get when you add a foaming agent, powdered titanium hydride, to molten aluminum, then let it cool. The result is a very strong substance that is relatively light, with 75-95% empty space. Because of its favorable strength-to-weight ratio, metal foams have been proposed as a construction material for space colonies. Some metal forms are so light that they float on water, which would make them excellent for building floating cities, like those analyzed by Marshall T. Savage in one of my favorite books, The Millennial Project.
9. Transparent alumina
Transparent alumina is three times stronger than steel and transparent. The number of applications for this are huge. Imagine an entire skyscraper or arcology made largely of transparent steel. The skylines of the future could look more like a series of floating black dots (opaque private rooms) rather than the monoliths of today. A huge space station made of transparent alumina could cruise in low Earth orbit without being a creepy black dot when it passes overhead. And hey... transparent swords!
10. E-textiles
If you meet up and talk to me in 2020, I'll likely be covered in electronic textiles. Why carry some electronic gadget you can easily lose when we can just wear our computers? We'll develop clothing that can constantly project the video of our choosing (unless it turns out being so annoying that we ban it). Imagine wearing a robe covered in a display that actually projects the night sky in realtime. Imagine talking to people over the "phone" just by making a hand gesture and activating electronics in your lapel, then merely thinking about what you want to say (thought-to-speech interfaces). The possibilities of e-textiles are limitless.
April 3rd, 2008 - 07:23
Looking for a super insulator for my home, a medium for solar heat storage, a material less fragile and more insulating than glass that will benefit passive solar heating systems, a medium for filtering waste water,a medium for hydrogen gas storage, and anything else that will help me with my oil addiction. All of these products show potential! Combining good science with American ingenuity will take us into the 21st century in grand style.
April 3rd, 2008 - 10:05
Metal foams + industrial-scale carbon nanotube production = extremely light air-tight construction materials.
Fill those bad boys with vacuum and build us some floating cities!
April 3rd, 2008 - 15:51
Graphene!
April 3rd, 2008 - 18:23
Glacier Bay makes “Ultra-R” insulating vacuum panels using aerogel as the “core” material. They are aboard the International Space Station but are also used in custom refrigerators and freezers which have remarkable holding times with extremely low power consumption.
http://www.glacierbay.com
April 3rd, 2008 - 19:01
Aerogel!
April 3rd, 2008 - 19:08
I teach a college program in diamond cutting and polishing and I can tell you that this article is quite mistaken concerning the physical properties of diamond. Diamond, having extreme hardness (resitance to scratching) also has zero plasticity. It will not bend, therefore it fractures very easily. These properties make the surface of diamond very durable but also quite useless as a mechanical part. If you doubt me take a diamond… any diamond that you may have laying around and smack it with something hard. If it dents like metal then this article is right… if it shatters into a million pieces then it’s wrong.
January 6th, 2011 - 22:33
glass vibrates @300mghtz a contained harmonic will allow said structure to absorb movement/bend/flex
June 15th, 2011 - 05:02
diamonds are not glass
January 10th, 2012 - 06:13
i know this is fairly late but i think you mean MHz (Mega Hertz)?
April 3rd, 2008 - 19:33
betagel is a whole different technology..
More in the same vein as the other, d3o(shock-absorption properties),
Less like aerogel(insulation/translucence properties)
successor to alphagel, developed by the same company.
April 3rd, 2008 - 20:08
The State will now be able to produce weapons systems that nothing can stop. Can you say “Terminator”?
April 3rd, 2008 - 20:27
Excellent article. Thank you! I would certainly want to see these materials used soon in everyday life. I am particularly excited about carbon nanotubes. 300 times stronger than steel, you say….whoof!
April 3rd, 2008 - 21:08
Diamond is not strong. It has enormous hardness, but that doesn’t equate to structural stability, it shatters easily with a hammer – making it useless for anything that is not based on friction.
April 3rd, 2008 - 21:13
Transparent Concrete?
April 3rd, 2008 - 22:27
Finally! Transparent aluminum so I can transport two whales back in time in my spaceship.
April 4th, 2008 - 01:21
awesome
April 4th, 2008 - 05:49
What about superconductors? We can’t have a list of future materials without them!
I also agree about the diamond point.
April 4th, 2008 - 06:12
Very sweet list!
April 4th, 2008 - 07:13
Fantastic list. You should win a prize for saying ‘And hey… transparent swords!’ HAHA!
April 10th, 2008 - 14:13
Well what about meta-stable metallic hydrogen (MSMH)? it is super-conducting, and a solid, superdense and yet stable form of one of the universes most abundant (and highest energy to weight ratio) fuels? shouldn’t it make the list instead of mass produced synthetic diamond?
January 15th, 2011 - 09:16
In chemical terms Hydrogen isn’t a fuel source the way most people think it is – there is no free source of it on Earth, so until we can collect it from gas giants it remains simply a way of storing energy.
And while it is a very light way of storing energy it is also a hugely voluminous way of doing so – making it good if you want to power a zeppelin but not if you want a car.
It does admittedly become more useful once you gain access to controlled fusion.
April 11th, 2008 - 14:22
Michael, we have no way of knowing if meta-stable metallic hydrogen is possible yet. From what we know now, it isn’t.
April 11th, 2008 - 19:32
Transparent Alumina? Hey that gives me an idea. Say you swing around the sun at warp speed and go back in time and visit San Francisco. You pick up a male-female pair of whales at the aquarium, put them in a transparent alumina aquarium you conveniently fit into your warp starship, and take them into the future to a time when they are extinct. Let them out under the Golden Gate Bridge while your spaceship sinks to the bottom. The female could even be pregnant!
April 11th, 2008 - 19:34
Sorry, Jeff. Didn’t see your post. Let me know if the way I developed the story meets with your approval. I’ll share royalties.
;-)
April 13th, 2008 - 17:44
Michael, are you aware that there are Google ads on this post?
April 13th, 2008 - 19:02
Yeah…
April 17th, 2008 - 15:29
Diamond(oid) IS brittle, that’s true—ya don’t wanna bang a diamond with a hammer (I thought everyone knew that…). But, if I’m not mistaken, diamondoid nanotech would not need to concern itself especially with the brittleness of the parts *per se*. The conglomeration of parts would, however, itself be brittle, and therefore, at least in this respect, fragile. One would then want to contain the mechanism(s) within a less fragile casing, such as…interestingly enough…transparent aluminum!! Or, for that matter, just using other carbon-formations, such as fullerene. Fullene could be a Kevlar-like sheath around the more fragile diamondoid components—which is to say, mind you, just around the “entire” mechanism or at least micro/meso-sized components, not sheathing around nano-scale sub-comonents (though, depending on the functionality of said components, sometimes this latter might occasionally be feasible…)
April 19th, 2008 - 02:39
Diamonds maybe brittle, but that hasn’t stopped them from using them on surfaces of industrial cutting tools and drill bits.
April 23rd, 2008 - 10:45
This stuff about using ‘diamond’ to make a string, or material for a sky lift: I’ve read about that in an Arthur C. Clark novel.
April 24th, 2008 - 18:17
There is a reason why amorphous metals are called ‘metallic glasses’. While it is true that they are very hard they are also quite brittle, just ask the ‘guy’ who wanted to make golf clubs out of them how that went…
The biggest problem with our ‘golden era of material science’ is that it produces horrendous new types of garbage which will be completely unrecyclable and it also generates a lot more toxic byproducts than just the still ongoing ‘golden era of the chemical industry’. Ever wondered how carbon fiber is produced? Or how can it be re-used once a part made out of it breaks? Don’t even try to look it up…
April 29th, 2008 - 23:45
all of these sound great, but do these products outweigh benefit and risk? and to who? i mean you don’t go messing with elemental structure without there being some byproduct or the product itself that is inherently dangerous to the health of the environment or the inhabitants (including us). So what master do these materials really serve, that of wealth and greed or health and sustainability.
May 5th, 2008 - 12:38
Excellent post! It kind of makes me sad that I won’t be around when all of this technology is finally come to fruition though.
May 11th, 2008 - 20:12
Diamonds are strong but one of the least malleable materials. I don’t think they would work in many applications involving metal.
May 11th, 2008 - 20:16
They’re only unmalleable using current technologies. Build them atom by atom, and they’re quite malleable. Diamond structures made to order.
May 23rd, 2008 - 18:30
“Amorphous metals may the military’s next generation of armor, before they adopt diamondoid armor in mid-century.” OK this article is interesting as speculation/prediction, but don’t start thinking you know exactly how technology will develop over the next 100 years…
May 23rd, 2008 - 19:26
Honestly, I’m tired and bored of having to add in qualifiers in every sentence. Use your own common sense.
Before they LIKELY adopt diamondoid armor in mid-century.
Happy?
May 26th, 2008 - 09:55
Very nice article!
June 17th, 2008 - 22:23
I love these typical luddite comments from le green and amanda above that vainly try to find negative consequences, with zero evidence at hand, driven by some ideology than assumes scientific progress and over-consumptive culture are one and the same. Almost all of the techologies mentioned here are, with correct application, potantial planet savers.
Really good green technology will come from ultra-light, ultra strong materials. Lightwieght vehicles will require less energy. Aerogel insulation will reduce heating energy needs tremendously.
Almost all of these technologies are ones that use LESS of the earths resources, often just re-arranging carbon, something we have in abundance, to replace much heavier and less efficient (hence more energy and resource intensive) old technologies.
If they could be bothered keeping up with the progress in emerging technologies, they would know (for instance) that the brittle issue with amorphous metals has been pretty much solved, as the number of products on the market here show: http://www.liquidmetal.com/applications/
Some people just get off on making snarky negative comments on any advancing technologies I guess. The thing that really irks me is they seem think things were better in the past. Despite their fears and whining, life expectancy keeps going up, infant mortality down, standards of living keep rising and the only thing that stops people being happy with all of this appears to be their own bloody mindedness and sacrifice to the gods of over-work and over-consumption. Idiots.
June 21st, 2008 - 22:58
really good!
June 22nd, 2008 - 06:27
Now, we need sustainable transportation platforms to avail ourselves of them. Check out my interview with Justin Sutton, inventor of the Interstate Traveler, the world’s first solar/hydrogen high-speed rail system. He will build it with NO public dollars and just needs us to spread the word! This is real and already has approval from the United States government.
http://tinyurl.com/5avocq
June 22nd, 2008 - 21:46
Really impressive and amazing things. I just wonder what we’ll do whith the old but contaminating materials such as plastics (all kind), batteries and foams…
Cheers!
,.~º*( aleare )*º~.,
June 24th, 2008 - 08:16
Recent evidence suggests that nanotubes are more carcinogenic than asbestos, are not filtered effectively and may remain indefinitely suspended in very slowly moving air, e.g. the atmosphere.
Add their indestructibility and you have an airborne poison with an almost infinite lifetime.
Call me a Luddite if you wish, but this needs some serious thought before we loose it on the world.
June 27th, 2008 - 21:49
Kryptonite.
June 28th, 2008 - 21:28
I have often thought of a material that could exist if we can figure out how to make it. I call it “vacugel”. It is aerogel but with a vacuum in each cel. If made right it would float in air like a hydrogen filled balloon.
June 29th, 2008 - 10:41
I thought transparent aluminium was only at Star Trek ?
June 29th, 2008 - 15:14
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June 30th, 2008 - 12:18
Thank you for publishing this list, it made an enjoyable read and ofcourse its interesting to think of the applications for these metals-.
June 30th, 2008 - 16:19
About the daimond thing…anyone ever heard of fiberglass? Now imagine the same concept but with diamond. Hit that with a hammer and see what happens. Or better yet a diamond laminate.
July 1st, 2008 - 05:32
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July 1st, 2008 - 09:17
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July 7th, 2008 - 22:02
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July 29th, 2008 - 17:51
i want to watch holograms with binoculars just for fun and everything on this sight is simply amazing
July 29th, 2008 - 17:56
*technologicaly amazing should i say
August 18th, 2008 - 23:43
Hi all!
It’s good tamplate!
Bye
October 26th, 2008 - 03:19
Certainly eye-opening. Transparent Alumnia is quite amazing (as are all entries).
October 27th, 2008 - 06:34
interesting materials, but i wonder what the cost implications are for these – they’re not all viable surely?
and as for the e-textiles… ridiculous. Yes you COULD wear a robe that has projections on it, but why would you want to do that? Imagine going to the cinema and everyone’s wearing one of those things. It would cause wars. Novelty clubbing attire at best.
October 27th, 2008 - 20:45
transparent alumina is genius! Imagine the possibilities!
October 28th, 2008 - 05:23
To Uncle B (1st post) we’re already in the 21st century… dumbass
October 29th, 2008 - 05:10
I’m curious to see implementations about the Transparent Alumina. That will be simply awesome.
October 30th, 2008 - 05:30
Its great to see the advances in material science, one of the most interesting fields there is…
October 31st, 2008 - 07:44
This is a very nice collection of futuristic materials.Many other nano materials are futuristic and deserve mention. Thanks.
December 15th, 2008 - 05:06
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January 6th, 2009 - 17:22
Transparent alumina is actually a compound called AlON, containing aluminum, oxygen and nitrogen developed recently by the US Military. It is NOT a metal and has nothing to do with the transparent aluminum of Star Trek. It is a ceramic, similar to alumina (aluminum oxide). While it has an extremely hardness value, wear resistance, and high tensile strength, it has a lower toughness value than that of some common metals. In short it fractures easily like diamond. Thus I would not recommend this material for any impact related roles, unless it is used as reinforcement in a matrix material.
January 6th, 2009 - 17:30
Metallic glasses are brittle in the sense that they behave essentially like ceramics under a load. They have no plastic deformation region (stretching/elongation) for their stress-strain curve. However their elasticity (at least for the titanium based Liquidmetal) is nearly 3 times that of regular titanium alloys. Some other way futuristic materials would be smart matter (materials embedded with sensors) and magmatter (based on monopoles)
January 19th, 2009 - 04:36
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March 24th, 2009 - 07:37
Cool Stuff! I seen that aerogel on TV. Hard, but brittle. Turned to dust when broken. Transparent alumina.. Amazing! How new is this? I recall a star-trek episode where they came back in time, gave the ‘furmula’ for transparent aluminum to some company, to have a tank made that could hold a whale.
May 26th, 2009 - 11:00
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May 27th, 2009 - 19:19
I mentioned one other futuristic material to you once Michael, although its not yet in production. Its buckymesh, the one I designed, with hopefully the highest possible strength to weight ratio. See the design at buckymesh.com (it was previously called nanoDiamond)
May 27th, 2009 - 19:42
Yeah, I’ve been aware of that for years, and it’s the most fascinating theoretical material ever. This post is just about stuff that actually exists, though.
August 11th, 2009 - 00:20
I believe I have what could be termed a futuristic material which is not commercially produced as yet but I do have a prototype.
It is called Hexaflex.
It is a new discovery of a geometrical matrix.
Check it out at
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=120920131626&ref=mf#/group.php?gid=118308907808
January 19th, 2010 - 02:01
Hi, just wanted to restate something that was written above.
Alumina is not Aluminium. That’s all.
March 10th, 2010 - 13:37
Michael,
I found your article very interesting and informative. Oddly enough, just recently I have been researching the possibility of installing Areogel in homes and other structures. The Europeans have been doing this for some time and the results are wonderful. The price of this product could be a “deal breaker” here in the states for residential and commercial applications, I’ll know more after getting a price quote from the manufacturer.
Eugene
April 29th, 2010 - 11:45
double WOWW !!!! Very interesting, but I always think to myself when will those wonderful new materials represent a true new age to mankind.
August 14th, 2010 - 00:42
Very interesting…though I admit that some of the ideas were a bit over my head… glad someone is out there thinkin”
October 17th, 2010 - 16:01
Very interesting stuff …. i think nano is the future for all materials in the world tested now
November 22nd, 2010 - 08:13
wow whats next, a conductive material that is lightweight, strong, and gets lighter when heated?
aww i guess it may have to be public info soon anyway
December 5th, 2010 - 00:11
Thank you for a really wonderful article. This can be useful to me personally as well as everyone who visits this web page. I’m looking forward for for some other articles from you.
December 27th, 2010 - 20:07
This article is just what I needed to brashly rush into Materials Engineering Physics instead of examining the other options.
March 31st, 2011 - 11:59
# 9
Transparent Aluminum was in “Star Trek 4; ‘The search for Spock’”.
Life imitates art.
Amen.
Allah is Great.
July 28th, 2011 - 01:03
Liquid smoke is one of the things I wanted to purchase as I`m a geek for such things! The seethruough aluminium is also great!
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