Batman body armor: coming to a store near you?

From the Hypno-Pimp:

For years I've justified Batman's lack of obvious body armor, saying that his costume is most likely a carbon weave, a sort of flexible kevlar.   

Alright, I'll admit it.  It's a bit Deus Ex Machina, but it's been my own little addition to the  "Why the Hell hasn't Batman been filled with holes by now?" argument.  

And hey, it works for me, so all you nit-picky bastards can blow me.

Funny thing is, it looks like I've been on the right track all along.

University of South Carolina professor of mechanical engineering (and home town fucking hero in my mind), Xiaodong Li recently co-authored of a paper on a new,  flexible fiber he helped develop, using not much more than plain, white t-shirts and boron.

The t-shirts were cut into thin strips and dipped into a boron solution. The strips were then removed from the solution and heated in an oven. The heat changes the cotton fibers into carbon fibers, which react with the boron solution and produce boron carbide.

What's boron carbide?  Not much, really.  It's just a little compound used to coat gears, tools, and oh yeah... bullet proof TANKS.

Usually, boron carbide is very brittle but these synthesized fibers are super-elastic and they maintain the same strength and stiffness of their predecessors. “They are not only lightweight but also flexible,” Li says. “We should be able to fabricate much tougher body armors using this new technique."

Also,  boron is cheap and plentiful.  Crystalline boron costs about $5 a gram, amorphous boron goes for $2.

Hmmm.   I've been hitting the gym like a man possesed lately,  I can apparently make flexible body armor on the cheap and I have an, um...intense Dark Knight obsession.

You see where I'm going with this?