What new materials are there?

New hardened material :

Proteus becomes the world's first manufactured non-cuttable material

Researchers from the UK's Durham University and Germany's Fraunhofer Institute claim they've come up with the world's first manufactured non-cuttable material, just 15 percent the density of steel, which they say could make for indestructible bike locks and lightweight armor.
newatlas.com newatlas.com
 
newatlas.com

2D material absorbs electromagnetic waves for superior shielding

Electromagnetic interference can be a serious problem for electronic devices, so shielding is usually placed around components. Now, engineers at Drexel University have found that a 2D material called titanium carbonitride is an excellent shielding material, thanks to its ability to absorb rather…
newatlas.com newatlas.com
 
Applied mycology again:

www.newscientist.com

Mould from Chernobyl nuclear reactor tested as radiation shield on ISS

A radiation-absorbing fungus discovered in Chernobyl blocked harmful cosmic rays on the International Space Station and may help protect future Mars colonies
www.newscientist.com www.newscientist.com

Paywalled, but you can get the gist and no doubt googling names will lead you to papers.
 
Rhinocrates said:
Applied mycology again:

www.newscientist.com

Mould from Chernobyl nuclear reactor tested as radiation shield on ISS

A radiation-absorbing fungus discovered in Chernobyl blocked harmful cosmic rays on the International Space Station and may help protect future Mars colonies
www.newscientist.com www.newscientist.com

Paywalled, but you can get the gist and no doubt googling names will lead you to papers.
Click to expand...
The full paper, preprint.
www.biorxiv.org

A Self-Replicating Radiation-Shield for Human Deep-Space Exploration: Radiotrophic Fungi can Attenuate Ionizing Radiation aboard the International Space Station

The greatest hazard for humans on deep-space exploration missions is radiation. To protect astronauts venturing out beyond Earth’s protective magnetosphere and sustain a permanent presence on Moon and/or Mars, advanced passive radiation protection is highly sought after. Due to the complex...
www.biorxiv.org www.biorxiv.org
 
A couple of interesting things about this stuff. First, its applications for solar cells as noted in the article, because it shifts radiation from a useless or harmful frequency to one that can be harvested. Second, biofluorescence (not to be confused with bioluminescence) has evolved as a strategy to deal with UV (in fact astrobiologists have proposed looking for fluorescence on planets around red dwarfs when they flare as biosigns).
www.newscientist.com

Super-bright fluorescent solids can be 3D printed in any shape

There’s a cheap new way to make fluorescent dyes into solid materials that glow, and it could be used to 3D print objects that guide light into solar cells
www.newscientist.com www.newscientist.com
Overall it looks like biotech (well, beer is biotech come to think of it) biomimetics, synthetic biology are going to have significant applications in space.
 
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More biomimicry - using regolith to make a form of chitin for tool and habitat construction:

www.eurekalert.org

Using chitin, a bioinspired material, to manufacture tools and shelters on Mars

A simple manufacturing technology based on chitin, one of the most ubiquitous organic polymers on Earth, could be used to build tools and shelters on Mars, according to a study published September 16 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Javier Fernandez of Singapore University of Technology...
www.eurekalert.org

journals.plos.org

Martian biolith: A bioinspired regolith composite for closed-loop extraterrestrial manufacturing

Given plans to revisit the lunar surface by the late 2020s and to take a crewed mission to Mars by the late 2030s, critical technologies must mature. In missions of extended duration, in situ resource utilization is necessary to both maximize scientific returns and minimize costs. While this...
journals.plos.org journals.plos.org
 
A general point I'd like to make is that genuinely hi-tech and elegant (low mass, closed loop, and ISRU), not ideologically Luddite, design has a lot to offer for aerospace, and vice versa, since optimum design for aerospace is 'green' it has a lot to offer on earth.
 
Arjen said:
Superconductive at room temperature - and a pressure of 2.6 million atmospheres.
Click to expand...


This material is a 3 element superconductor.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02895-0

Adding a third element greatly broadens the combinations that can be included in future experiments searching for new superconductors, says study co-author Ashkan Salamat, a physicist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “We’ve opened a whole new region” of exploration, he says.

Materials that superconduct at high but not extreme pressures could already be put to use, says Maddury Somayazulu, a high-pressure-materials scientist at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois. The study shows that by “judiciously choosing the third and fourth element” in a superconductor, he says, you could in principle bring down its operational pressure.
Click to expand...


A real world high temperature superconductor now exists and the category for its operation offers a real world possibility for finding something that could be applicable for wide use. Which of course makes the trip to Pandora unnecessary.
 
phys.org

Carbon nanotubes developed for super efficient desalination

Membrane separations have become critical to human existence, with no better example than water purification. As water scarcity becomes more common and communities start running out of cheap available water, they need to supplement their supplies with desalinated water from seawater and brackish...
phys.org phys.org
 
Stunning work. It's also amazing to see how deeply international this study is.

Every soldier, public servant or volonteer could now be part of a gigantic sensing unit that track and locate any harmful and rogue radiation.
 
I have a few materials specialist mates and none of them can speak here, one day maybe ;-) think the craziest thoughts you can on materials behaviour for any given task and then triple it..... (or the opposite depending on what it is meant to do!) :)
 

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