The hand-torn steel produced by a Chinese team that is only 1/6 the thickness of a hair after 711 times of failures, breaking the long-term monopoly maintained by a few countries and laying the foundation for the production of more sophisticated products.Photo: Sina Weibo

A Chinese team produced hand-torn steel that is only one-sixth the thickness of a hair after 711 failures, laying the foundation for the production of more sophisticated products.

Known as the crown jewel of the steel industry, hand-torn steel is a thin high-end stainless steel, a favorite of products in aerospace and mobile phone screens with only a few countries having the technology to produce it.

A research team from North China's Shanxi Province at an average age of 30 has developed the world's thinnest "hand-torn steel" at 0.02 millimeters after 711 failures in 2018. They then rolled the thickness from 0.02 millimeters to 0.015 millimeters, setting a new world record.