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Futuristic 'Smart' Yarns from Carbon Nanotubes
neutron_p writes "Scientists at The UTD NanoTech Institute achieved a major technological breakthrough by spinning multi-walled carbon nanotube yarns that are strong, tough and extremely flexible, and are both electrically and thermally conducting. Among other things, the futuristic yarns could result in 'smart' clothing that stores electricity, provides ballistic protection and adjusts temperature and porosity to provide greater comfort. The breakthrough, made possible by, in effect, downsizing ancient technology used for wool and cotton spinning to the nanoscale, resulted from an unusual collaboration involving nanotechnologists and experts in wool spinning."
Screw smart clothes... Hopefully this stuff can be made into next generation pressurised (200-300 atm) rocket fuel tanks. No turbopumps, reliable pressure fed engines without weight penalty in bulky tanks and cheap RLV is one important step closer to reality.
It's been established that single-walled carbon nanotube structures are the only viable candidate for making a tether with a sufficient strength/mass ratio.
This spinning process seems to only apply to multi-walled nanotubes, at least according to what the submitter wrote.
In other words, not quite.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Comparing Carbon nanotubes to MP3 players is like comparing the transistor to a Radio Flyer wagon.
CNTs are like lasers. When the laser was invented in 1955 or so (someone correct me), it was billed as a "solution looking for a problem." No one knew what the hell to do with it. Naturally, it being the Cold War, most research money was pumped into Star Wars-style blasters...but now look at all the work done with lasers. Surgery, trace gas detection for pollution controls, CD players, DVD players, spectroscopy for materials science, the list goes on. The point is that CNT research is very early. Hell, nanotubes weren't known to exist until 1990 or so. This is one breakthrough out of about a billion or so possible with Carbon Nanotubes. Don't judge the technology based on the premise of "fancy clothing." Hell, the point of the link isn't the clothing part; it's the fact that a new fabrication method was invented that would improve production (and thus, deployment) of nanotubes by orders of magnitude. It's like finding a new way to make lasers on a broad scale instead of slowly making them by hand like in 1960. What you do with the plethora of nanotubes or lasers or what have you is up to you.
Somehow I have a feeling the ultrafine fiber fragments shed by these yarns or fabrics made from them with age and wear won't be so happy biologically.
Generally small particles or fillaments of any material smaller than a certain size are bad for you if inhaled (i.e. Pneumoconiosis), regardless of their composition.
Additionally, if fiber fragments are short and fine enough, you essentially have little needle-like objects that can do a lot of damage directly at the cellular level.
So, not that I'm being pessimistic or anything, but in the long term I don't think it'll remain an everyday item. It might hit the open market for a while, but a few decades of cancer studies, toxicoligical studies and lawsuits would likely bring an end to that.
While my guesses are just that, there are a few discouraging signs in research to date. Watch this area; we'll see whether further results warrant concern or not.
To be clear, I think this technology should certainly be pursued, but we need to be guarded in our optimisim regarding its widespread applicability.
DNA just wants to be free...