World Record: Four-Centimeter-Long Carbon Nanotube

colonist writes "University of California scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory and chemists from Duke University have recently grown a four-centimeter-long, single-wall carbon nanotube (SWNT): a new world record. Previous SWNTs were a few millimeters long. Yuntian Zhu and his colleagues used a process called 'catalytic chemical vapor deposition' from ethanol (alcohol) vapor. From their abstract: 'Our results suggest the possibility of growing SWNTs continuously without any apparent length limitation.' Zhu: 'although this discovery is really only a beginning, the continued development of longer length carbon nanotubes could result in nearly endless applications. Actually, the potential uses for long carbon nanotubes are probably limited only by our imagination.'"

Comments

Re:(Still a) Way to go.

[amorsen]

1/10th of a centimeter is a millimeter. 1/10000th of a centimeter is a micrometer. Anyway, at 11um/s, 4cm takes an hour. Geosynch takes a hundred thousand years. Better get started.

Re:Metallic carbon?

[Dibblah]

Answering my own question here, but it appears the article is correct. Metallic in this case is refering to the crystaline structure that the carbon forms. This gives the nanotube certain properties that are 'metallic' - High tensile strength, ductile, flexible, etc.