Kevlar? Hah! You'll Want Pure Carbon in Your Bulletproof Vest

[Rhykker]

Kevlar? Hah! You'll Want Pure Carbon in Your Bulletproof Vest

Graphene, a form of pure carbon, has been shown to perform twice as well as Kevlar and withstand 10 times the kinetic energy that steel can.

Carbon is an interesting element. If you arrange carbon atoms in a cubic crystal structure, you get diamond, a material that tops out our hardness scale. If you arrange carbon in a hexagonal sheet structure, you get graphite, a material so soft that we make pencils out of them - yes, the "lead" in your pencil is actually graphite. But if you take a single sheet of graphite, one atom thick, you get graphene [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/graphene], a material that is remarkably strong for its very low weight.

Graphene was first produced in 2003, and a new study by Jae-Hwang Lee and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst has proven its strength at absorbing kinetic energy - such as from a bullet impact.

A small-scale experiment was devised - very small, using 10 to 100 sheets of the atom-thick material and a bullet one micrometer in size (one thousandth of a millimeter). The bullet was fired at a rate of 3000 meters per second, about three times the muzzle velocity of an M16 rifle, and the results found that the graphene was able to dissipate the energy twice as well as Kevlar [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/kevlar] and can withstand 10 times the kinetic energy that steel can.

While research into using graphene in body armor has been ongoing for some time, this is the first paper to describe how the material absorbs kinetic energy. The graphene sheets stretch into a cone shape at the point of impact, then crack radially outward. It is believed that by either using multiple layers of the material, or by making a composite material, the cracks can be stopped from spreading.

Correct note: The text initially suggested that the muzzle velocity of an M16 is 9000 meters per second.

Source: New Scientist [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26626-bulletproof-graphene-makes-ultrastrong-body-armour.html#.VHpZ6YvF98E]

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[Roxor]

Coming soon to some flavour text in a game: Graphene armour.

 

[SJXarg]

Do you mean 300m/s? Quick lookup on Wikipedia has the M16 muzzle velocity at 3,110 ft/s (948m/s), the way you've phrased it makes it sound like an M16 has 9000m/s muzzle velocity.

 

[Rhykker]

There are things harder then Diamond. It is just that Diamond is the hardest natural thing we have on Earth.

In mineralogy, we used a scale called Mohs Scale of Hardness to determine how scratch resistant (hard) something is. The chart assigns a rating from 1 to 10, with Diamond representing 10. It's an ordinal scale, not an absolute scale, and is not stating that there exists nothing in the world harder than diamond - but it was when the scale was designed.

The point, though, is that carbon can make some of the hardest or least-hard stuff in the world, simply by rearranging the atoms.

 

[ccggenius12]

Shouldn't they be testing at the speed for which it's use will generally be applicable? This seems like the logic that went into building the Titanic...

 

[Hoplon]

Do you mean 300m/s? Quick lookup on Wikipedia has the M16 muzzle velocity at 3,110 ft/s (948m/s), the way you've phrased it makes it sound like an M16 has 9000m/s muzzle velocity.

that's in the original article as well, so it's either them making a mistake or it was 3 times faster not 1/3rd

 

[Thaluikhain]

Shouldn't they be testing at the speed for which it's use will generally be applicable? This seems like the logic that went into building the Titanic...

Not necessarily, at least not right away. Possibly this is the sort of test they do to see if there might be a point doing further testing,

 

[FalloutJack]

Well, we have Greed. Now, we need Envy, Lust, Gluttony, Wrath, Pride, and Sloth on this Homunculus Parade.

 

[Strazdas]

Very unlikely due to two factors:

1) graphene is significantly more expensive to manufacture than Kevlar. we can have full body armor for troops in Iraq, but we dont do that, because while it would increase safety - its too expensive. so dont expect graphene body armor any time soon unless you can mass amanufacture it cheap.

2) Graphene shatters. Shattering carbon products can piece human tissue and cause more damage than the bullet itself. Kevlar when broken does not shatter, it just splits and moves aside. Thus Graphene is significantly less safer in situation where its possible to shatter it - and lets just say a situation where you need armor vests are quite dangerous.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Yes yes it's the miracle material of the microscopic world, problem is these things do not translate one to one when changing scale. Primarily there is the issue of keeping this perfect sheet of atoms as a perfect sheet of atoms out in the real world where all sorts of wear and tear applies.

 

[Roger Selover]

3000 meters per second works out to 9842.5197 feet per second, or more than triple the std muzzle velocity of a M16 rifle bullet.

 

[Me55enger]

3000 meters per second works out to 9842.5197 feet per second, or more than triple the std muzzle velocity of a M16 rifle bullet.

I love that you clearly joined the Escapist forums to post this.

Fairly sure one of the limiting factors of Graphine is the cost to manufacture even small quantities of it.

 

[Gorrath]

Shouldn't they be testing at the speed for which it's use will generally be applicable? This seems like the logic that went into building the Titanic...

Well, it could be used for a lot of things but this study was simply looking at how the material reacted to an object striking it at a certain speed. The point was to see what happens to graphene under the lab conditions provided, not act as proof of concept for a specific product. At least that's how I read it.

 

[Avaholic03]

Very unlikely due to two factors:

1) graphene is significantly more expensive to manufacture than Kevlar. we can have full body armor for troops in Iraq, but we dont do that, because while it would increase safety - its too expensive. so dont expect graphene body armor any time soon unless you can mass amanufacture it cheap.

2) Graphene shatters. Shattering carbon products can piece human tissue and cause more damage than the bullet itself. Kevlar when broken does not shatter, it just splits and moves aside. Thus Graphene is significantly less safer in situation where its possible to shatter it - and lets just say a situation where you need armor vests are quite dangerous.

1) For now that's true. But with all the exciting applications of graphene, it's only a matter of time before it is produced in significant quantities and becomes cost effective. It's far more versatile than Kevlar, and especially with all the consumer electronics applications, tons of money is being dumped into research.

2) In all likelihood, it would be paired with some other material (like Kevlar) to "catch" the pieces so that shattering isn't a problem. It's not like anyone will just strap a sheet of graphene to their chest and hope for the best. The important part is how it dissipates energy effectively, and is very light weight. You can always supplement other materials to make up for its shortcomings. Also, from what I've read it's relatively easy to manipulate the physical properties of graphene, so maybe they find a "formula" that doesn't shatter.

 

[Alexander Kirby]

Shouldn't they be testing at the speed for which it's use will generally be applicable? This seems like the logic that went into building the Titanic...

Author actually made a mistake, rifle bullets do no where near 3000 m/s, more like 1000.

 

[V4Viewtiful]

And Some where, an angry billionaire can finally become the night in safety.

 

[Rhykker]

To those pointing out the muzzle velocity error, you are right. I've made the correction. The source appears to have gotten its units mixed up in the conversion of feet per second to meters per second.

 

[GabeZhul]

Yes yes it's the miracle material of the microscopic world, problem is these things do not translate one to one when changing scale. Primarily there is the issue of keeping this perfect sheet of atoms as a perfect sheet of atoms out in the real world where all sorts of wear and tear applies.

Exactly. Graphene has been heralded as a miracle material for years now, promising that it would change the landscape of building materials, semi-conductors and even batteries, but at the end of the day none of those came true (or will come true in the foreseeable future) because graphene is not scalable. It's just like a lot of other miracle materials: under lab conditions and in microscopic amounts the show seemingly revolutionary parameters, but the moment you scale them up to actually useful sizes and forms, manufacturing imperfections and other issues make them lose their special properties or they become prohibitively expensive... most often both at the same time.