14.06.2021 Nanostructuring of materials leads to completely new, often surprising properties; this makes them highly interesting for new fields of application and technologies. However, whether these materials can be processed into robust components and thus find their way into applications depends very much on their mechanical properties. These are usually particularly difficult to determine without changing them through the measuring process or even destroying the materials. Within a German-French research team we have now developed a non-contact and non-destructive measurement method using laser ultrasound in such a way that the elastic properties of nanostructured materials can be characterised in detail. The results are reported in an article entitled "Laser-excited elastic guided waves reveal the complex mechanics of nanoporous silicon" in the journal Nature Communications (see also the DESY/TUHH press release: German/English).