Carbon fiber–aluminum sandwich for micro-aerial vehicles and miniature robots

We present carbon-fiber and aluminum sandwich plates with millimeter thicknesses that exhibit high stiffness- and strength-to-weight ratios. These composites consist of carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer faces and waterjet-cut aluminum cores, bonded using epoxy. Relative to single-ply carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer sheets, this construction provides 22-fold increases in mass-specific flexural rigidity and 18-fold increases in mass-specific flexural strength, with areal densities of only 120–260 mg/cm 2 . Our work represents a simple and inexpensive platform for creating extremely lightweight structural components for microflyers and small robots. Graphic abstract