New thermal insulator outperforms any material found in nature

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Add as preferred source Credit: Jun Liu Researchers have engineered a new material that is an extreme thermal insulator, is exceptionally stiff and can be printed as a thin film at large scales. The material has one of the lowest thermal conductivity profiles of any dense, or nonporous, material—approaching the theoretical limit of how good a material can be as a thermal insulator.

"Stiff materials that are good thermal insulators would have substantial utility in a variety of applications, from cookware to electronic devices to space travel," says Dali Sun, co-corresponding author of a journal article on the work and a professor of physics at North Carolina State University.