Scientists Produce Long, Hair-Like Nanotubes
Two submissioins on this item:
waynerad writes "For the first time, researchers have created a simplified method for making long, continuous, hair-like strands of carbon nanotubes that are as much as eight inches in length. This breakthrough, reported in the May 3 issue of Science, is a first step toward creating such products as microcables for electrical devices or mechanically robust electrochemical actuators for artificial muscles.
The researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and collaborators at Tsinghua University in Beijing found that chemical vapor deposition (CVD), a widely used technique to grow nanotubes, has a high yield of long strands when a sulfur-containing compound and hydrogen are added to the process."
And Brian Wang writes "For the first time, researchers have created a simplified method for making long, continuous, hair-like strands of carbon nanotubes that are as much as eight inches in length. This breakthrough, reported in the May 3 issue of Science, is a first step toward creating such products as microcables for electrical devices or mechanically robust electrochemical actuators for artificial muscles. The researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and collaborators at Tsinghua University in Beijing found that chemical vapor deposition (CVD), a widely used technique to grow nanotubes, has a high yield of long strands when a sulfur-containing compound and hydrogen are added to the process. Researchers have previously created nanotube fibers with more complex methods, but because CVD is commonly used to make nanotubes, it would be easily adaptable and more efficient for synthesizing the long strands for practical applications. This new method produced nanotubes that measured 20 centimeters, much longer than conventional nanotubes, said Pulickel Ajayan. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-05/rpi -spl050102.php"
May 8th, 2002 at 5:45 AM
Important step
Cool. Now maybe they can be made long enough to test this paper, which claims that long strands of multiwall tubes may be superconducting at over 400K.
Almost seems too good to be true, but I live in hope.
May 12th, 2002 at 3:55 PM
Re:Important step
I also live in hope, but I wish nano advances were quicker. Humans need to decentralise, or face grave conflict on Earth.
I want to use the space elevators, to help escape from the surface. There are way too many people spoiling the Earth's ecology from which I depend, sharing the same space.
I want to build my own ecology, away from others. I want organically contructed protection, not a mechanical spacecraft, when I begin my long journey to another star system. At this time I will have peace and freedom.
May 13th, 2002 at 8:49 AM
We seem to have a misquote here
This new method produced nanotubes that measured 20 centimeters, much longer than conventional nanotubes, said Pulickel Ajayan.
This is quite different from "We have created strands with nearly aligned nanotubes that are as long as 20 centimeters. The nanotubes are well ordered in these structures and are self-assembled during the growth process," according to the press release the first link points to.
Doesn't this refer to the length of strands of nanotubes, as opposed to individual nanotubes? The Science article itself gives me the same impression, that the actual length of the nanotubes is unknown while the nanotube bundles are 20 cm long.
It's still a huge improvement over having to manually organize the nanotubes into long cables, though.