Magical Australian powder at $560 a gram will let you talk faster, longer

[psychopomp]

Sydney Morning Herald
-snip-

Until about five years ago all nanotubes were carbon. Then it was found that with lasers at extremely high temperatures they could also be made in boron nitride. However, the process was expensive, producing just grams at a time.

But Chen's team has won an international race to revolutionise the process, discovering how to make them with technology long used by miners to crush rock. Instead of rock, the ANU "crushes" boron in nitrogen gas.

"We can make kilograms," says Chen, a senior research fellow. "We are leading the world in BN nanotube production."

Australia sells them to researchers in the US, Europe and Japan for $560 a gram. "The price will come down," Chen says. And when it does, the impact will be huge. "There will be lots of applications, including new super-strong composite materials for cars and aeroplanes."

Nanotubes would work like sponge to store hydrogen gas as fuel to run cars. Golf clubs and tennis racquets of nanotubes would be almost unbreakable.

"You could even build nanotube cables between the planets and use as a space elevator," says Chen. Interplanetary voyages would be reduced to cable-car rides.

The team is also working on nanotube devices. IBM has produced a nanotube transistor 500 times smaller than silicon transistors.

"Future computers using nanotube transistors and other devices will be the size of mobile phones, but faster and more powerful ," says Chen. "Nanotube TVs will be thinner than plasma TVs, and much sharper and brighter."
-more

Something potentially very interesting on the horizon with benefits for all. Will change design much the way the mass-use of plastic did, or more.

[psychopomp]

1. Right forum?

Hmmmm.. GD would have been better? Lounge? Ummm... Meeting Room??

[papau]

3. Environment/Energy/Science - as in Science - forum

:-)

[papau]

2. Neat - but I do not follow concept used to assemble

Says “Factory assembly may be tricky” with boron nitride nanotubes 5000 times thinner than a human hair, so they’re “developing a method to "grow" nanotubes in place, rather than install them, using a “vapour containing carbon and a metal catalyst over a silicon wafer…(with) nanotubes (forming) on selected sites."

OK - boron nitride tubes come out of a cloud of carbon messing with silicon in the presence of a catalyst - huh? What happen to ""crushes" boron in nitrogen gas"?

[psychopomp]

5. I don't know how they got to BN in the first place

However, it is exciting to see the future utilization of nanotubes closer to becoming reality.

Now, how about those buckeyballs?

[ClintonTyree]

4. I remember.............

a particular powder that I used in the 70's that cost WAY less than $560 a gram that would make me talk faster and longer. I believe it came from Columbia.

[Shyriath]

6. Hold up, now!

"You could even build nanotube cables between the planets and use as a space elevator," says Chen. Interplanetary voyages would be reduced to cable-car rides.

Not in the least. A cable like that, no matter how long, could not be stretched between planets and reliably used as transport; with everything moving relative to each other, distances would be constatly changing, and there would be otehr stuff getting in your way (other planets, the Sun). Even making one between just the Earth and the Moon would be a feat firmly in the realm of science fiction.

What material like this COULD possibly do is make possible the 'space elevator', which would stretch from the ground to geostationary orbit. Instead of launching rockets into orbit around the earth, a cablecar-like assemblage could ferry things up and down the elevator. This could simplify interplanetary travel immensely; cargo and people could simply be lifted to orbit, instead of expending huge amounts of rocket fuel to push them there. It would also mean that you could build spaceships that wouldn't have to land on a planet, because as long as there was a space elevator in place, the stuff on board could just be let down.

There is a potential problem with even that, though; the cable must be extremely strong, because it must not only be able to hold the weight of the elevator and cargo, but (especially at higher altitudes) the weight of all the cable below it, and it's been claimed that Earth's gravity would make such a cable too heavy to support itself like that.

[On the Road]

7. Boron -- Here's Why It's Used

"Boron fibers, which have a very high tensile strength, can be added to plastics to make a material that is stronger than steel yet lighter than aluminum. "

Boron has five protons rather than the six for carbon, so each atom is lighter. Theoretically, you could use Lithium (Atomic # 3), but it is combustible in air. Maybe Beryllium (Atomic # 4) might be considered in the future:

Beryllium is a strong, extremely light, high-melting, silver-gray metal with a close-packed hexagonal crystalline structure. ...The addition of 2% to 3% of beryllium to copper makes a nonmagnetic alloy six times stronger than pure copper. "