Revolutionary New Material for Agriculture Machinery? Stronger than Steel, Light as Plastic?

Is a revolutionary new material knocking at the agriculture equipment industry’s doorstep? Scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) reportedly have created a substance stronger than steel and light as plastic.

MIT’s creation, 2DPA1, has an extremely high elastic modulus (a measure of force required to deform a substance) greater than bulletproof glass by a factor of four to six. Further, 2DPA1’s yield strength (force required to break a substance) doubles that of steel, but measures only one-sixth of steel’s density. Additionally, 2DPA1 is impermeable to gases and can be mass produced.

If further testing proves 2DPA1 to be genuinely groundbreaking, and conducive to manufacture in large amounts, as stated by MIT, it might play a significant role in machinery production, including the agriculture industry.

No Spaghetti

2DPA1 is a two-dimensional polymer that self-assembles into sheets, distinct from the one-dimensional, spaghetti-like chains of all other polymers. The newly created 2DPA1 could be used a coating for vehicle parts or cell phones, or as a building material in bridges or steel structures, according to Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and senior author of a new study on 2DPA1.

“We don’t usually think of plastics as being something that you could use to support a building, but with this material, you can enable new things,” he says. “It has very unusual properties and we’re very excited about that.”

The MIT engineering team has applied for two patents.

Legos

Simplified, 2DPA1 is the outcome of a process previously considered impossible: polymerizing a material in two dimensions.

“Instead of making a spaghetti-like molecule, we can make a sheet-like molecular plane, where we get molecules to hook themselves together in two dimensions,” Strano says. “This mechanism happens spontaneously in solution, and after we synthesize the material, we can easily spin-coat thin films that are extraordinarily strong.”

According to MIT, 2DPA-1 self-assembles in solution, and can be manufactured in large amounts by ramping up the quantity of the starting material.

“With this advance, we have planar molecules that are going to be much easier to fashion into a very strong, but extremely thin material,” Strano says.

2DPA-1 is impermeable to gases. Whereas other polymers allow gases to seep through gaps in their makeup, the new material is made from monomers that fit Lego-style, and molecules cannot pass between them.

“This could allow us to create ultrathin coatings that can completely prevent water or gases from getting through,” Strano says. “This kind of barrier coating could be used to protect metal in cars and other vehicles, or steel structures.”