It has been reported through new scientist.com, developers have been working on constructing a new ultra light, ultra strong body armor, made from a one atom thick graphene carbonate. The new single atom thick armor can absorb impacts that would puncture steel, performing nearly double as protective than modern body armor, while being significantly lighter in weight. The light weight, high performance body armor will be great for police and military units alike and have received a lot of attention from these agencies in the past couple weeks.

The single layered carbon atom graphene is bonded together in a perfect honeycomb shape and is an proficient conductor of both heat and electricity. It conduction effects are responsible for graphene’s prominent use in computer systems and electronics. Although its conduction properties are lucrative, it is graphene’s incredible strength and light weight that have made it into a potential material for body armor.

The problem lies within the current testing rituals of graphene. It is increasingly difficult to fire high speed rounds at a microscopically thin one atom layer of material, even with its incredible strength, the thin layer still shatters on impact. Scientist in their attempts have previously used nano-pokers to push the graphene at walking speeds, even with a shotgun approach firing multiple laster pulsing projections. Unfortunately these methods have failed to provide evidence of graphene’s potential strength against high-speed projectiles.

Jae-Hwang Lee at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and his colleagues have created a new miniature ballistics test using a laser pulse to superheat gold filaments. The plan is to vaporize the gold filaments so that it acts like a gunpowder to fire a micron-glass bullet into 10 to 100 sheets of graphene at nearly 3000 meters a second. That is currently one-third of the speed of a bullet fired by an M16 rifle.

It has been known for some time sound waves travel three times faster through the graphene layers than they travel through steel, quickly absorbing and dissipating its energy. The same energy could slow down materials entering the impact point, slowing the projectiles down and preventing penetration.