3D Printed Tubulanes as Lightweight Hypervelocity Impact Resistant Structures

• Published in: Small (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) Vol. 15; no. 52; pp. e1904747 - n/a
• Main Authors: Sajadi, Seyed Mohammad, Woellner, Cristiano F., Ramesh, Prathyush, Eichmann, Shannon L., Sun, Qiushi, Boul, Peter J., Thaemlitz, Carl J., Rahman, Muhammad M., Baughman, Ray H., Galvão, Douglas S., Tiwary, Chandra Sekhar, Ajayan, Pulickel M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Germany Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.12.2019
• Subjects: 3D printing; ballistic impact resistance; Carbon nanotubes; Construction materials; Deformation mechanisms; Hypervelocity impact; Impact resistance; Lamellar structure; Lightweight; Load resistance; mechanical properties; molecular dynamics (MD) simulation; Nanotechnology; Organic materials; Porosity; Three dimensional printing; tubulanes; molecular dynamics (MD) simulation; ballistic impact resistance; tubulanes; 3D printing; mechanical properties
• ISSN: 1613-6810; 1613-6829
• DOI: 10.1002/smll.201904747

Lightweight materials with high ballistic impact resistance and load‐bearing capabilities are regarded as a holy grail in materials design. Nature builds these complementary properties into materials using soft organic materials with optimized, complex geometries. Here, the compressive deformation and ballistic impact properties of three different 3D printed polymer structures, named tubulanes, are reported, which are the architectural analogues of cross‐linked carbon nanotubes. The results show that macroscopic tubulanes are remarkable high load‐bearing, hypervelocity impact‐resistant lightweight structures. They exhibit a lamellar deformation mechanism, arising from the tubulane ordered pore structure, manifested across multiple length scales from nano to macro dimensions. This approach of using complex geometries inspired by atomic and nanoscale models to generate macroscale printed structures allows innovative morphological engineering of materials with tunable mechanical responses. Complex topology can result in unique load/stress transfer, which can give rise to impact resistance. Here, complex tubelene structure is demonstrated with complex topology results in unique mechanical response in normal loading as well as under high impact.