It is now possible to 3D print air. Or rather, something even lighter. An international team of scientists has developed a technique to 3D print graphene aerogel, crowned the world’s lightest material in 2013. Weighing in at 7.5 times lighter than air, one square meter of this aerogel has a mass of just 160 grams. Flexible, conductive, elastic, ultra-absorbent… the properties of this solid gas, often called “frozen smoke” seem to be infinite. One of its potential applications could be to decontaminate the ocean from hydrocarbons, as one gram of graphene aerogel can absorb up to 900 times its weight in oil. However, initial results of experiments with graphene-based aerogel show that its porous structure is very irregular, and therefore not adaptable on an industrial scale.
Researchers 3D Print Matter That’s Lighter Than Air
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