Researchers find strengths in ‘metallic wood’

So-called metallic wood with the strength of an alloy has potential uses in machining, as well as other applications, said James Pikul, whose research team recently published a study on the subject. The researchers built a sheet of nickel with nanoscale pores that make it as strong as titanium but four to five times lighter.

“It can be quite brittle, so on its own it might be difficult to shape,” said Pikul, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and applied mechanics at the University of Pennsylvania. “We are, however, looking at making composites from it that will increase its ductility, in which case it could prove to be a nice workpiece material as the composite should be more ductile.”

Sezer Özerinç of Middle East Technical University in Turkey; Paul V. Braun and William P. King of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and Vikram S. Deshpande and Burigede Liu at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. were the main co-contributors to the study. They have researched metallic wood since 2012 but primarily used the material for battery applications.

Pikul said his initial work showed that if used as a current collector in batteries, the material could enable them to have 100 to 1,000 times the power of typical commercial batteries. After that research, he realized that the geometry and chemistry of the material might provide promising mechanical properties. The researchers started studying those properties in 2015, and the report about metallic wood was the result.

A microscopic sample of the metallic wood. Image courtesy of J. Pikul

“I imagine it can be used as the reinforcing material in a composite,” he said. “It is possible it could be used for machining as it is light and strong and hard, but I think it has more applications as a structural material where the weight matters more.”