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# Titanium that floats, printed in Melbourne
- URL: https://www.earthtoseanews.com/floating-titanium/
- Published: 2026-09-08T20:45:11.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-08T20:45:11.000Z
- Description: Metal lattices are wonderfully light and always sink. An RMIT team in Melbourne has printed a titanium one that floats, shrugs off seawater, and is stronger than the steel and plastic in every jetty and buoy.
- Author: Nicole McMahon
- Tags: Innovations, All stories

Titanium lattices, printed layer by layer with hollow struts, can weigh less than a tenth of the same volume of water, yet every one of them sinks, because water simply flows into the open spaces. Dr Jordan Noronha and colleagues at RMIT University's Centre for Additive Manufacturing solved it by filling only the hollow struts with a light foam, so water still flows through the lattice while the structure itself stays buoyant, even after significant cracking and damage. Published this week in Advanced Materials, the work shows the hybrid lattice is around seventy per cent stronger than the stainless steel and high density plastic used in jetties, buoys and floating sensors at the same overall density. After two weeks in natural seawater from Port Phillip Bay it had lost 0.15 per cent of its mass and less than one per cent of its strength, and a sample floated in fresh water for more than two months.

To prove it, the team printed a marine buoy and set it in a turbulent seawater tank tilted to forty five degrees, where it stayed upright and stable with no sealed casing, no protective coating and no extra flotation. Project leader Distinguished Professor Ma Qian, with Associate Professor Andrey Molotnikov, Distinguished Professor Milan Brandt and Professor Martin Leary, now wants to scale the parts up and test them for the long haul in real seas and at depth. Buoys that outlast their moorings, sensor floats that need no plastic housing, jetty parts that do not corrode: for a coastline like ours it is a quietly useful invention, and the next versions may be tuned to soak up impact, manage heat or damp vibration, depending on what goes inside the struts.

### Sources and links

Our short take: the full story is by Michael Quin for RMIT University (2 September 2026), from the paper in Advanced Materials. Photograph: Unsplash.

- [RMIT University news](https://www.rmit.edu.au/news) The research release and the buoy demonstration.