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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."
Dude! Diamonds AND nanotubes!!! That's like, pirates AND ninjas!!!!!
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?
I am intrigued by your notions of "modern technology" and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
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)
I happen to love how chemistry has been rebranded as nanotechnology. My favorite example is stain-resistant Dockers.
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.
First Scientist: Hey! You got nanotubes in my diamonds! Second Scientist: Hey! You got diamonds in my nanotubes!
The space elevator is a fantasy (etc.)
Good thing you're so much smarter than all them fancy-pants scientists and engineers with their high-falutin' PhD's and book-learnin' working on that damn-fool idea! If they just listen to you, they'll stop wasting their time!
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Why hell, I bet I could increase pi up to a couple of hundred if I felt like taking the time to do it right. Just go ahead and insert those diameters in the circumference and then pin them off and then just beat the living hell out of the remainder of whatever diameter is still hanging out there until it by god just goes on in. With a big enough beater, and enought time, and who knows, maybe a torch kit or something, I'm pretty sure I could work things out to get pi to most any old number you might want.
Is it fascism yet?