Silica nanofibres are 15x stronger than steel
Researchers at the University of Southampton have created silica nanofibres that are 15 times stronger than steel and which can potentially be manufactured in lengths of thousands of kilometres.
"With synthetic fibres it is important to have high strength, achieved by production of fibre with extremely low defect rates, and low weight," says Dr Gilberto Brambilla, pictured, principal research fellow at the University's Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC).
"Usually, if you increase the strength of a fibre, you have to increase its diameter and thus its weight, but our research has shown that as you decrease the size of silica nanofibres their strength increases."
According to Dr Brambilla, the discovery could change the future of composites and high strength materials across the world and have a huge impact on the marine, aviation and security industries. "We want to investigate their potential use in composites and envisage this material could be used extensively in the manufacture of products such as aircraft, speedboats and helicopters."
ORC director Professor Sir David Payne added: "Weight for weight, silica nanowires are 15 times stronger than high strength steel and 10 times stronger than conventional glass reinforced plastic. We can decrease the amount of material used thereby reducing the weight of the object."
Dr Brambilla said the smaller the fibre, the more their behaviour changes. "When they become very, very small, they behave in a completely different way. They stop being fragile and don't break like glass, but instead become ductile and break like plastic. This means they can be strained a lot. Until now, most of our research has been into the science of nanowires," he concluded, "but in the future we are particularly interested in investigating the technology and applications of these fibres."
