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.'"

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200 meter carbon nanotube fibers also out

[ghostlibrary]

In Science News, June 14, 2003, Baughman's team of Univ of Texas made a single-walled carbon nanotube fiber composite that's the width of a human hair, and 100 to 200 meters long. The nanotubes are spun with polyvinyl alcohol, and are 4 times tougher than spider silk (the previous record-holder) as well as stronger (can hold more weight).

100-200 meters, that's a length you can do useful stuff. One weird thing is, they weave it in with ordinary cloth to make supercapacitors in clothing (for built-in antenna,s tiny batteries, et cetera). The field is called 'electronic textiles'!