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Yarn Spun from Nanotubes
jabberjaw writes "Nature is reporting that Professor Alan H Windle has spun nanotube yarn by twisting nanotubes onto spinning rods as they come out of the furnace from which they are made. Professor Windle's team used ethanol (carbon source) with ferrocene (catalyst) and thiopene (for thread assembly) to create the structure. To create the tubes a mix of the above chemicals is inserted into a furnace in a jet of hydrogen gas. However, do not get your hopes up yet, the press release also indicates that the yarn has a strength comparable to that of most modern textiles but the groups does state that there is room for improvement. Yes, for those of you wondering, there is mention of a space elevator."
Granny can now knit me that virtually invulnerable monitor cozy I've always wanted!
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
Last Monday I caught a sweater on something at work. I remember plain as day muttering "Damn wool and its inherent weaknesses! My fashion woes would be eliminated if someone would come up with a way to feed a mixture of ethanol and catalytic ferrocene with a splash of thiopene into a hydrogen gas furnace..."
What's David Boies' phone number?
Trolling is a art,
Not this time...
... one letter makes a big difference in chemistry
thiophene
IAAC - I am a chemist
There were these carbon molecules in a Erlinmeyer flask. They wanted to see the world in a way no other carbon molecules had before. So they held hands and created a buckeyball....
Well, maybe not an interesting yarn for YOU, Carbon based Ugly bag of mostly-water, but the little carbonettes just EAT these stories up!
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
If you thought politicians were bad, now even NANOTUBES are spinning yarn.
The Nanotube Site
I can only imagine that this would make one of the most expensive sweaters ever. What are the insulating properties of nanotubes? We may not have the tensile strength available to us at a macro level, but if they have good insulation properties, this yarn may be somewhat commercially viable in certain niche applications as-is. Y'think? Then again, are they flammable? That might be bad.
-1, "1337" speak
Just think of the fishing line you could have. It could cut your boat in half.
Getting a space elevator mentioned in Nature is huge, whether or not it is a viable project. It will help give it the exposure it needs to get debated on whether it is a viable project by people that could actually help get it off the ground.
-Sean
So next time someone snaps my picture., my sweater will explode.
Very amusing...
Just curious... given a rope so strong, how would one untie or cut it if it is entangled.
Quite scary to be tied by such a rope.
Hey, that's my password you are typing
This could well be interesting stuff even if it is no
stronger than current polymers. The advantage may well
arise from its ability to retain its strength
at high temperatures which current threads do not.
UV resistance would be another big win.
Grandmothers delight as they learn that they can now make a sweater that is immune to all those mysterious things that keep plaguing all the other sweaters previously given to their grandchildren.
So next time someone snaps my picture., my sweater will explode.
Once again, a new technology's most obvious application is in pornography.
The enemies of Democracy are
Given the toughness and other properties of carbon nanotubes, does the dust tend to be like graphite, and reasonably safe as an inhalation hazard (being heavy and all), or has any kind of toxicology testing been done with them? I'd hate to see carbon nanotube fragments becoming the next asbestos.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
What amazes me is that we never seem to learn. As a scientist, I see this scenerio played out over and over. Someone discovers something new and kinda cool. Then, in the ferver of excitement that follows, the sun, moon and stars are promised. Much activity occurs. Some progress is made. Real work gets done. But, at the end of the day, we have no sun, moon, and stars.
Carbon nanotubes are an interesting discovery, but making them in adundance is non-trivial. Forming them into useful macro structures is also not well understood, to put it mildly. I hate to break it to you, but there will be no space elevator, at least any time soon.
This irrational exuberance of science tends to hurt more than help. Becuase when someone promises the world and then doesn't deliver. It hurts the entire discipline in the way of funding cuts by politicians who feel burned for beleiving the hype. Just some perspective.
My two cents,
-Iowa
"He who laughs last, didn't get the joke."-Cap
Before everyone gets the idea of dressing up Jerry Ryan in ultra tight nonotube fabrics I would like to point out that this material is not properly investigated regarding toxicity. Even a brief look on the net will show that it is quite possible it has similar properties as asbestos fibres, and that is not nice.
I can't seem to find it now, but Jordin Kare (of LLNL) had a nice presentation showing that a space elevator isn't really any cheaper than a RLV - even under when the space elevator assumes not-yet-existent materials like carbon nanotube composites with tensile strength approaching that of the raw fiber and the RLV is built only using existing technology.
Many proponents of certain technologies forget to take into account that hypothetical advancements required for their favorite technology will also benefit competing technologies. For example - carbon nanotube composites will make superb structural material for a high fuel fraction RLV, and it doesn't take tens of thousands of kilometers of the stuff.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Not true... the elasticity is mostly determined by the vests weaving. Kevlar does not stretch very much - its tensile elongation % is 2.8
Vests need to distribute the energy across the vest and elasticaity doesn't help there.