[Originally posted on LinkedIn on 17th October 2025]
This Sunday, London will host the LA Rams, an NFL team symbolised by the iconic shape of a rams’ horn. But interest in sheep horns goes far beyond sports. As shown in a new paper in Advanced Materials, by mimicking the structure of a rams’ horn, a material can be developed that withstands high-energy impacts.
When a ram engages in a headbutt, it’s horns must survive very high forces. To do this, a structure evolved to give the horns a curved shape, made from millimetre-sized tubes that form by stacking microscopic pancake-shaped cells.
Mirroring the structure of a sheep horn, the authors prepared a ceramic scaffold made from microtubes. Each microtube was formed from a series of ring-shaped nanoplates, held together by epoxy resin.
The overall structure demonstrated:
- Very high energy absorption
- High compressive strength
- Low density
- Repeatable shape recovery
Why does this matter?
Most materials designed for high-energy impacts crumple, making them unusable after a crash. This new design can absorb high-force impacts and then reform its original shape, even after 5 impact cycles. These properties make it promising for use in robotics, vehicles and protective gear.
Future NFL helmets may one day include horn-inspired materials to protect athletes, containing ram-based designs from inside to out.
Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202513573 from Wiley
Jiewei Chen, Nifang Zhao, Meng Li, Yaoguang Wang, Weiwei Gao and Hao Bai, Horn-Inspired Hierarchical Tubular Composites for Recoverable High-Energy Absorption, Adv. Mater., 2025, e13573