Similar to grass stems, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists have created nanostrut-connected tube-in-tubes that enable stronger low-density structural materials.

Porous materials with engineered stretching-dominated lattice designs, which offer attractive mechanical properties with ultra-light weight and large surface area for wide-ranging applications, have recently achieved near-ideal linear scaling between stiffness and density.

In the new research, the team developed a process to transform fully dense, 3D-printed polymeric beams into graphitic carbon hollow tube-in-tube sandwich structures, where, similar to grass stems, the inner and outer tubes are connected through a network of struts. The research is on the cover of the Oct. 25 issue of Nature Materials.