Nanotubes from Vodka & Whisky

seawasp writes "Synthezising nanotubes from vodka and whisky with simple equipment making it much cheaper and more available to future science projects such as the development of smaller electronic components. Read more about it at Daily Yomiuri On-Line. Just a note, I hope for the sake of my life they won't extract nanotubes from beer."

Comments

Re:A few days late

[Anonymous Coward]

Hirose has also synthesized diamonds from alcoholic beverages. The process was described in high school chemistry textbooks.

Would it be that this was an April Fools joke? Or has someone seen those chemistry textbooks?

I can believe both claims.

The usual method for growing diamond films uses methane as the carbon source. Alcohol (ethanol) is simple enough that I could see it working in the place of methane.

Ditto for growing buckytubes. Heat up a cloud of alcohol vapour, and the OH group will steal a hydrogen and detach as water, bonding two alcohol molecules. Hydrogen remaining on the carbon chains comes off as methane or hydrogen if sufficiently persuaded. What you end up with is mess containing graphite and a few graphite sheets rolled into fullerene tubes.

Remember, buckyballs and buckytubes can be found in _candle soot_. Producing them's not hard - it's producing them at high yields with very specific characteristics that's the tough part.