A team of researchers at MIT have designed one of the lightest and strongest materials ever using graphene.
They made it by compressing and fusing flakes of graphene, a two-dimensional form of carbon.
The new material has just five per cent density and ten times the strength of steel, making it useful for applications where lightweight, strong materials are required.
Tests conducted by the MIT team ruled out a possibility proposed previously by other teams that it might be possible to make 3-D graphene structures lighter than air and used as a replacement for helium in balloons.