Metal Foams are not the hardest metal and have many excellent properties

Metal Foams Overview
Metal Foams are materials consisting of honeycomb layers of metallic structures with a certain degree of porosity that are lightweight, highly energy absorbing, thermally and electrically conductive. Metal Foams can be tuned to the metal used, the processing, and the pore structure, resulting in different properties and a variety of applications with different requirements.

Metal Foam Hardness
Metal foams are not the hardest metals; their hardness can vary depending on the metal composition and pore structure. For example, tungsten foam can reach Vickers hardness of 600, while aluminum foam is relatively low on the hardness scale, usually around HV50. In contrast, superhard diamonds synthesized at high pressures and temperatures can reach a Vickers hardness of about 5,000, which is more than ten times the hardness of metal foams.

Excellent properties of metal foams
Although metal foam is not the hardest, it still has a variety of excellent properties. For example:
1, lightweight: due to its pore structure, the metal foam has a very low density, usually less than 0.5 g/cm3, so it can be used as a lightweight structural material in aerospace and automotive applications.
2、Highly energy-absorbing: The pore structure of the metal foam allows it to deform and absorb energy when subjected to pressure, so it has excellent anti-vibration and anti-collision capabilities.
3, thermal and electrical properties: metal foam can be used as a good thermal insulation and thermal conductivity material, but also has good electrical conductivity.

Due to the above excellent properties, metal foam has a wide range of application prospects, such as for automotive shock absorption materials, aerospace structural components, bulletproof materials, chemical reactors, and other fields.