Stronger and lighter material than steel in production

Researchers at the University of Connecticut (UConn) have created a surprisingly strong yet lightweight material. And they did it in an interesting way: Using DNA and a kind of glass!

While the team first created a self-assembling DNA structure, nanomaterials scientists Oleg Gang and Aaron Mickelson achieved this successful result by coating the DNA with a very thin layer of glass-derived material, just a few hundred atoms thick. UConn materials scientist Seok-Woo Lee, one of the authors of the study published in Cell Reports, points out that the structure they created is the strongest material known for such lightness.