The Super-Strong Body Armor of the Future

Robocop is coming. What you've seen in SF movies featuring invincible heroes can now turn into reality. A Cambridge team has employed nanotechnology to achieve a super-strong body armor for the military and law enforcement.

The new material is 5-10 times stronger, tougher and stiffer than what current technology offers and even lightweight. It is made of millions of extremely minute carbon nanotubes, in an attempt to realize the strongest ever man-made fiber.

"These nanotube fibers possess characteristics which enable them to be woven as a cloth, or incorporated into composite materials to produce super-strong products," said Professor Windle.

In body armor, the fiber strength and strain-to-failure (how much you can stretch a material before it cedes) are the main issue. The Cambridge material can absorb energy through fragments moving at extreme speeds.

"Our fiber is up there with the existing high performance fibers such as Kevlar. We've seen bits that are much better than Kevlar in all respects", said Windle.

UK Ministry of Defense and the US Army are already interested, but this could be applied from hi-tech intelligent fabrics, bomb-proof refuse bins and flexible solar panels to wires carrying electrical power and signals, now made of metals (copper).

The team put ethanol into the furnace along with a low quantity of iron-based catalyst. The ethanol (the common alcohol) is broken down to carbon and hydrogen. The iron catalyst shapes the carbon atoms into long, thin-walled nanotubes.

"It makes particles of carbon that are like smoke. But because the nanotubes are entangled, the smoke we make is elastic," said Windle.

A rod inserted into the furnace sticks to one end of the carbon material and stretches it down into a filament that can be spun, but the method still must be turned into an industrial production technique. Q-Flo Limited, a university spin-out company, will apply the technology.

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