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Diamond Nanotubes Created
raxxy writes to tell us that researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne Nation Laboratory have taken the next step in nano development. Combining the process for 'growing' diamonds and the latest in carbon nanotubes has given birth to a diamond-nanotube composite. From the article: "Diamond has its drawbacks, however. Diamond is a brittle material and is normally not electrically conducting. Nanotubes, on the other hand, are incredibly strong and are also great electrical conductors, but harnessing these attributes into real materials has proved elusive. By integrating these two novel forms of carbon together at the nanoscale a new material is produced that combines the material properties of both diamond and nanotubes."
Soon we're going to need a seperate category on /. for this. Maybe we can change the font from Times New Roman to something "nano". Although if the /. eds can't do it for the frontpage, what can they do it for? Interesting stuff though.
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
Can this be used in the space elevator? Tensile pressure and all?
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
everyone's tubes keep getting longer and harder all the time.
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. - Douglas Adams
With a diamond-nanotube composite ring.
I think the important question here is...how will this help us make better moon lasers?
This seems very similar to this article from just a few days ago, yet I don't think they're the same thing. I'd be interested in seeing a direct comparison of the nanorods and the diamond nanotubes.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
Composites! Where the composite material is equal to or greater than the sum of its parts!
Dude! Diamonds AND nanotubes!!! That's like, pirates AND ninjas!!!!!
Is this the coming of The Diamond Age? I can't wait for the diamond to lose it's monatary value.
Dinotubes.
Thank you, I'll be here all next week.
This is a nano diamond ring, you cant see it but will you marry me?
Can these be used for making a space elevator? If so, why hasn't one been made? We could attach one from the Earth to the Moon. A really strong one, what would that do? We could then go on trips to the Moon.
I know the rotation of the Earth and the orbit of the Moon don't quite work like that, but with modern technology that could be solved, either by altering the rotation of the Earth or the orbit of the Moon. Or a moving elevator that goes along on a track so it keeps in line with the Moon.
plenty of nanovapor though
or perhaps they are so small nobody can see these so called "amazing applications that will revolutionize life as we know it"
still no cure for cancer
Everyone mark your calendar. This is the first day that history will show. The production of electric nano tubes will be the beginning of the brains for the robots that will come and take our pills when we're geriatrics!
not so elusive it would seem.
"Yes, ok so it's really useful, but does it look any good in earrings?"
"Diamond-Nanotube Composites Are Forever" just doesn't sound like a catchy slogan. Or Kanye West song, for that matter.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Congratulations. You can do vapor deposition of diamonds, and you can do vapor deposition of carbon nanotubes. So can everyone else. You can do them both at the same time? Interesting. Too bad you can't control the process beyond the ratio of nanotube to diamond.
What about average tube length? Alignment? Bonding with the diamond? Anything beyond what you'd get if you mixed extremely fine diamond powder and nanotube powder, mixed and compressed? Guess not.
However "Ultrananocrystalline(tm)" sure sounds cool. Maybe the innovation is in the buzzword.
IHABSCP (I have a B.S. Computational Physics)
Well if this is the same material that was reported about a week ago everywhere else (and probably /.) it's not strong enough for the space elevator (Aggregated diamond nanorods have a modulus of 491 gigapascals (GPa), compared with 442 GPa for conventional diamond.)
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Maybe she'll settle for a tubular zirconia.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Ok, seriously, who thought up the name "ultrananocrystalline" ?
This article is a bit confusing. First, of course, diamond is carbon. Solid carbon exists in two forms: diamond and graphite. The carbon bonds in the diamond structure are tetragonal (I think, been a while since chemistry), each carbon being bonded to four others. In the graphite structure, each carbon is bonded to three other co-planar carbons (trigonal planar?). I believe pi bonds form above and below the plane, adding some stability.
With the graphite form, all you can get is planes, tubes, or balls. Graphite is slippery because the intraplanar bonds are strong but the interplanar bonds are weak. The intraplanar grahpite bonds are stronger than the diamond bonds in fact, which is why nanotubes are so strong. With the diamond form, you can only get solid crystalline structures.
The headline is wrong (no surpirse). These are not "diamond nanotubes", but some sort of composite of (presumably) "ultranano" diamond particles and carbon nanotubes. The article doesn't go into much detail, and I don't care to delve any deeper at this point.
(Off topic reply to myself...)
Speaking of "Ultranano", I think we need some sort of official ranking of these types of modifiers. Based on my experience in a retail store stocking hair gel, I've come up with the following heirarchy (as applied to hair gel hold strength):
Please make additions or corrections to this list. I think this should become an ISO standard or something.
The space elevator is a fantasy. Theoretically possible some day, but the technical hurdles combined with the inherent drawbacks of the technology mean it will NEVER be put into practice... at least not on Earth.
Now, all this nanotechnology WILL likely translate into stronger, lighter, more durable space craft. If the production methods can bring nanotechnology to a reasonable price, then, some day, my grandkids might get to buy a ticket to Mars.
Nanotechnology will never give us the space elvator, even if it make it technically possible.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
MP3's can it hold compared to this Diamond http://www.digitalnetworksna.com/rioaudio/default. asp?cat=35
Will these be controlled by an evil diamond nanotube cartel in order to drive up their prices 1000-fold? And then will they bribe their way out of an anti-trust case?
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
Diamond nanotubes, or nanotube diamonds? Sort like pirate ghosts, or ghost pirates; or pirate ninjas vs. ninja pirates?
... in that they have achieved a combination (not with diamond but an alternative form of carbon) but don't really say what the properties are. Diamonds are brittle but hard. Carbon nanotubes exihibit high tensile strength. So the new material is a brittle, unscratchable sheet with high tensile strength? You might assume so, except that the article talks about "... use in low-friction, wear-resistant coatings, catalyst supports for fuel cells, high-voltage electronics, low-power, high-bandwidth radio frequency microelectromechanical/nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS), thermionic energy generation, low-energy consumption flat panel displays and hydrogen storage." and "...interesting electronic and photonic transport properties". Either, someone is trying to generate some funding by using "nanotubes" and "diamonds" in the same article or this is one poorly written release.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
First Scientist: Hey! You got nanotubes in my diamonds! Second Scientist: Hey! You got diamonds in my nanotubes!
Diamond is a brittle material and is normally not electrically conducting. Nanotubes, on the other hand, are incredibly strong and are also great electrical conductors... a new material is produced that combines the material properties of both diamond and nanotubes.
So we have brittle, less conductive nanotubes? I don't get the advantage here...
>Diamond has its drawbacks, however. Diamond is a
>brittle material and is normally not electrically
>conducting.
You know, for all that diamonds don't conduct electricity and such, women still go crazy for 'em.
Women!
So... is it like tieing a piece of bread with butter on it to the back of a cat?
We all know that bread with butter always falls with the butter face down and that the cat always falls on its paws, so one will cancel the other and the cat will be able to defy gravity, being suspended in mid-air?
Existing transmission lines are a huge waste of energy. They hold back conversion from fossile fuels to solar and wind by limiting the distance electricity can be effectively sent. Copper is too soft and heavy so aluminum transmission lines are built but there is too much resistance so transmission distance is cut back.
With nanotubes, near-superconducting transmission lines could be built which would enable cloudly areas to reap the benefits of solar electric power from deserts and wind power from the plains.
References:
http://smalley.rice.edu/ (see associated video lecture.)
"Diamond has its drawbacks, however. Diamond is a brittle material and is normally not electrically conducting. Nanotubes, on the other hand, are incredibly strong and are also great electrical conductors, but harnessing these attributes into real materials has proved elusive. "
Looks like they take two great technologies and put them together to get one mediocre result.
keyboard not found! press any key to continue...
No, the point is that normal diamonds are poor conductors but if you restructure them into nanotubes then they would be great conductors.
But since the Nanotubes are already great conductors with high tensile strength you would do this because...?
The original post had a humorous point, that the article summary lists only negative properties for diamonds and the declares wonder and happiness at getting nanotubes to take on these properties. While I'm sure the end result has some very nice properties it would have been pleasing to hear about them in the article summary too.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ever heard of carbon-fiber composites? Strong and light but fairly brittle fibers embedded in a flexible, resilient, but low tensile strength epoxy matrix. And the combination is wicked cool stuff. The matrix balances the load between all the fibers nicely, and prevents any one fiber from bending to the shatter point. The fibers themselves make the composite incredibly strong for its weight.
Silicon carbide grains (hard, rigid) embedded in a block of aluminum (soft, flexible) is another composite with fantastic combined properties. Makes for nice structural members that need to survive a lot of abrasion.
So maybe we can now make diamond-coated nanotubes, giving us an insulated conductor (what a concept), that's super abrasion- and corrosion-resistant to boot. Or use nanotubes for their mechanical strength, but the integrated diamond improves the wear resistance of the cable you're using for lifts to orbit.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
As we all know, chocolate (or "candy" for our USAsian cousins) come in several sizes. What is less well known, is that the confectionary industry has evolved a uniform measurement scale for all chocolate bars.
Here it is, in order of increasing mass:
So this thing is brittle but very hard to produce ? ...in Soviet Russia !
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Not going to work.
Bread buttered heavy wants to land bread size down.
More like straping a 2 cats together back to back.
And having them crash down on there side.
Ie the third option of coin fliping. Heads tails and the edge.
It's been a long time since that lecture on P and N dopings, but isn't the combination of a conducting and a non-conducting material useful in semiconductors? Something about Si not being a conductor until it's doped? Are there diode junctions in this stuff?
"The Internet is made of cats."
Somehow I must have missed when the world forgot about the existence of diamonds. Apparently they're new now.
IANAMP (I am not a molecular physicist) but I have always wondered if it is possible to "dope" diamonds in a similar way that Silicon is "doped" to cause "holes"...
Silicon and Carbon are both quite similar in the kinds of chemistry that they form...
-- The universe began. Life started on a billion worlds...
-- Except on one where stupidity was there first.
Nanotubes made out of diamonds... now thats a good low cost solution.