Quantum Wires

Silverlancer writes "Room temperature superconductors have often been a hallmark of far-future science fiction. But fortunately for us, they're here today, according to MIT's Technology Review. Richard Smalley, winner of the 1996 Nobel Prize for the discovery of the buckyball, is currently heading a project to produce a prototype carbon nanotube superconductor. They've already produced some wires up to 100 meters long--the only thing left to do is figure out how to produce only a certain type of nanotube, the "5,5 armchair nanotube," that conducts so well that it can be considered a superconductor."

Comments

Re:really a superconductor?

[fearofcarpet]

No. Superconductors must be able to form so-called Cooper Pairs in order for electrons to move in the coherent manner in which no energy is lost. I gather the rules are a little different at really small scales where tunneling becomes a much bigger issue and some of the energy relationships are backwards, but the principle is still the same; if electrons bang into something they lose energy.

Metallic carbon nanotubes, to the best of my knowledge, cannot be made crystalline (perfectly regular) over large enough domains for this to happen thus there is "minimal energy loss" and they are really just very, very, very low resistance conductors (you can tell the difference by looking at the temperature dependance of the resistance).

The thing is, unless you want to build a mag-lev train, you don't really need a perfect super conductor. Right now the conductivities of the metals used in electronis are around 10^6 - 10^10 (inverse ohms per centimeter) and you can put your hand on your computer case to see just how much energy is dissipated as heat. If you increased those conductivities (with metallic carbon nanotubes for example) then your heat sink shrinks and your clock cycles come up... Assuming we can wire teeny tiny circuits with nanotubes. More importantly, you can drive portable electronics with less power, and thus smaller batteries.

BTW (regarding the very first post), some of the Slashdot Armchair Scientists (there are other sciences besides physics too you know) out here in computer land have Masters and PhDs and have published or worked in the field. Some of us have even met and/or worked with the people mentioned in the articles. I wouldn't be so quick to push aside honest criticism, afterall that is what scientists are trained to do - be skeptical :)