Supramolecular metallic foams with ultrahigh specific strength and sustainable recyclability

Abstract

Porous materials with ultrahigh specific strength are highly desirable for aerospace, automotive and construction applications. However, because of the harsh processing of metal foams and intrinsic low strength of polymer foams, both are difficult to meet the demand for scalable development of structural foams. Herein, we present a supramolecular metallic foam (SMF) enabled by core-shell nanostructured liquid metals connected with high-density metal-ligand coordination and hydrogen bonding interactions, which maintain fluid to avoid stress concentration during foam processing at subzero temperatures. The resulted SMFs exhibit ultrahigh specific strength of 489.68 kN m kg−1 (about 5 times and 56 times higher than aluminum foams and polyurethane foams) and specific modulus of 281.23 kN m kg−1 to withstand the repeated loading of a car, overturning the previous understanding of the difficulty to achieve ultrahigh mechanical properties in traditional polymeric or organic foams. More importantly, end-of-life SMFs can be reprocessed into value-added products (e.g., fibers and films) by facile water reprocessing due to the high-density interfacial supramolecular bonding. We envisage this work will not only pave the way for porous structural materials design but also show the sustainable solution to plastic environmental risks.