{"id":565145,"date":"2026-08-10T23:40:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T23:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/565145\/"},"modified":"2026-08-10T23:40:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T23:40:14","slug":"iron-man-inspired-material-made-from-dna-and-glass-is-5x-stronger-than-steel-and-4x-lighter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/565145\/","title":{"rendered":"Iron Man-inspired material made from DNA and glass is 5x stronger than steel — and 4x lighter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/a>A silhouette of a superhero in high-tech armor, standing against a sunset backdrop. Credit: AI-generated, DALL-E 3. <\/p>\n

Regular glass is brittle and fragile. But pure glass built into structures using DNA is a different beast entirely.<\/p>\n

Scientists have successfully combined the intricate structure of DNA with the purity of glass to create a material that boasts both lightness and unprecedented strength. The resulting supermaterial is five times lighter yet four times stronger than steel. This makes it \u201cthe strongest known\u201d for its given density, according to the scientists who forged the material from the University of Connecticut, Columbia University, and Brookhaven National Lab.<\/p>\n

An unexpected union of strength and lightness<\/p>\n

The quest for materials that perfectly balance strength and lightness has always been a challenge. The two characteristics often seem at odds with each other, but that doesn\u2019t have to be the case. In fact, as a team of dedicated researchers showed, these two traits can sometimes go hand in hand. <\/p>\n

Most cool science projects feature some equally cool inspiration. This time it came from Iron Man\u2019s iconic suit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am a big fan of Iron Man movies, and I have always wondered how to create a better armor for Iron Man. It must be very light for him to fly faster. It must be very strong to protect him from enemies\u2019 attacks. Our new material is five times lighter but four times stronger than steel<\/a>. So, our\u00a0glass<\/a>\u00a0nanolattices would be much better than any other structural\u00a0materials<\/a>\u00a0to create an improved armor for Iron Man,\u201d said Oleg Gang, a nanomaterials scientist at Columbia University.<\/p>\n

The crux of their approach lies in exploiting the inherent strengths of glass. Yes, that same glass that shatters with the slightest mishap. The reason why glass breaks easily has to do, in most cases, with imperfections in its structure, like cracks or missing atoms. However, in its purest, most flawless form, a tiny piece of glass can endure pressures that would crumble even some of the sturdiest, heaviest materials.<\/p>\n

However, crafting large, unblemished glass pieces is extremely challenging. This is why when using glass as a structural material, a size less than a micrometer thick is nearly always perfect. And since it\u2019s lighter than many metals and ceramics, structures made of such pristine nano-sized glass are both powerful and feather-light.<\/p>\n

\"Glass<\/a>The series of images at the top (A) show how the skeleton of the structure is assembled with DNA, then coated with glass. (B) shows a transmission electron microscope image of the material, and (C) shows a scanning electron microscope image of it, with the two right-hand panels zooming in to features at different scales. Credit: University of Connecticut<\/p>\n

To shape the pure glass particles into a 3D framework, the researchers turned to DNA, which they used as a scaffold. Imagine a house frame, but instead of wood or steel, it\u2019s constructed entirely of DNA. This self-assembling DNA<\/a> framework acts as a skeleton, onto which scientists meticulously applied a glass coating. This delicate balance results in a material that\u2019s both robust and lightweight, achieving strengths and densities previously thought impossible.<\/p>\n

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For the structures tested mechanically in the study, however, the DNA was ultimately a temporary scaffold. The researchers heat-treated the finished nanolattices, solidifying the silica and removing the DNA. What remained was an extraordinarily light, hollow glass architecture whose struts were only a few nanometers thick.<\/p>\n

This delicate balance results in a material that\u2019s both robust and lightweight, achieving strengths and densities previously thought impossible.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ability to create designed 3D framework nanomaterials using DNA and mineralize them opens enormous opportunities for engineering mechanical properties. But much research work is still needed before we can employ it as a technology,\u201d says Gang.<\/p>\n

DNA glass gets an upgrade<\/p>\n

The original study appeared in 2023. Since then, various teams have begun testing just how far this unusual construction method can go.<\/p>\n

In 2024, another team<\/a> built similar DNA-silica nanolattices but systematically changed their geometry and the thickness of the glass coating. Unlike the earlier experiment, they kept the DNA inside the finished structures. Turns out, that mattered quite a lot. Simulations suggested that the DNA core suppressed the large-scale buckling that can cause tiny lattice struts to collapse, delaying failure and helping the structures survive much larger deformations. <\/p>\n

That adds another interesting layer to the idea. DNA doesn\u2019t have to simply tell researchers where to put the glass and then disappear. Under the right conditions, it can become part of the mechanical design itself.<\/p>\n

And glass is no longer the only material researchers are putting onto these DNA skeletons.<\/p>\n

In another study<\/a> published in 2024, Gang and colleagues showed that DNA-programmed frameworks could be converted into structures containing metals, metal oxides and semiconductors. The researchers demonstrated materials incorporating zinc, aluminum, copper, molybdenum, tungsten, indium, tin and platinum, as well as compounds such as indium tin oxide. The goal was to show that DNA could act as a general construction system for precisely shaped inorganic materials with potentially mechanical, electronic and optical properties.<\/p>\n

But can you make enough of it?<\/p>\n

This remains the big problem.<\/p>\n

Making an exceptional structure only micrometers across is very different from making a car panel, an airplane component or Iron Man\u2019s armor. DNA origami offers almost absurd levels of control at the nanoscale, but cost, manufacturing scale and integration with ordinary fabrication techniques remain serious obstacles.<\/p>\n

There has been progress here too. In 2025, Gang\u2019s team<\/a> demonstrated a way to grow 3D DNA-programmed lattices selectively on patterned silicon wafers and metal-oxide surfaces. They produced structures with features tens of micrometers wide across patterned areas of about 10 square millimeters. The technique worked on silicon oxide as well as aluminum oxide, titanium dioxide and zinc oxide. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s still nowhere near producing bulk structural materials. But it begins to address an important intermediate problem: how to make DNA-assembled nanostructures appear in predetermined locations across much larger surfaces. <\/p>\n

Rather than being a bizarre way to make tiny pieces of unusually strong glass, DNA is increasingly becoming a programmable construction system for materials at scales that conventional manufacturing struggles to reach.<\/p>\n

Does this mean that we\u2019ll get to see some of these crazy materials embedded into Iron Man-like body armor someday? Probably not anytime soon. But three years after that first experiment, researchers are still building on the idea \u2014 and they now have considerably more ways to decide what these tiny structures are made of, how they deform, and where they grow.<\/p>\n

The article was originally published on October 20, 2023, and has been updated with additional information.<\/p>\n

The findings appeared in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A silhouette of a superhero in high-tech armor, standing against a sunset backdrop. Credit: AI-generated, DALL-E 3. Regular…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[111,139,69,147],"class_list":["post-565145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}