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Nanowires of Unlimited Length
StCredZero writes with word of a research team from the University of Illinois who have developed a way to manufacture nanowires of any length from various materials. Not, unfortunately, carbon nanotubes, or we would be looking for news on space elevators soon. The process is analogous to drawing with a fountain pen — as liquid is drawn from a reservoir, a solvent (water or an organic) evaporates and the solute precipitates onto a substrate. The researchers have demonstrated a way to spin and wind a nanowire onto a spool; they have produced a coil of microfiber 850 nm in diameter and 40 cm long. Here's the abstract from the journal Advanced Materials.
From TFA (The Fine Abstract):
Abstract
No abstract.
It's not the length of the wire, it's how you use it.
But they only made the wires out of sugar, and various other water soluble compounds. While they said they could make wires out of ingredients that dissolve in volatile organic compounds, when will they be able to make them out of metal?
IMHO, is this:
To further demonstrate the versatility of the drawing process, for which the U. of I. has applied for a patent, the researchers drew nanofibers out of sugar, out of potassium hydroxide (a major industrial chemical) and out of densely packed quantum dots.
Nanowires made of quantum dots? Sounds like an outstanding way to make a super efficient solar panel.
You could lay out nano structures of quantum dots with whatever spacing and precision you'd like. And unlike all the other advances we usually see here on /. this one is already working.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Now I can finally string one across a lane of traffic. Preferably at 4WD hight. I've been waiting a long time for shigawire.
In other news a goofy red-blue character with the habit of spinning threads of various lengths has been seen roaming the streets of New York.
On a more serious note this is what many silk spinners do. They excrete silk as liquid and it becomes a wire or a sheet a few ms later. Some silk spinners manage threads which are in micrometers in diameter as well.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Now we can finally start closing the so called "garotte gap" with the Russians.
expandfairuse.org
doesn't it have to be around or under 100nm to be considered nano?
And over there is my intergalactic spaceship. And here's where I keep assorted lengths of wire.
God spoke to me.
Apparently I am of unlimited height... times 4.
i have a penis of unlimited length. i just thought you all should know this.
hm... nano-wire made from sugar? Cotton candy isn't known for its extreme strength.
there's nothing to see here. move along.
It looks like this "O"
How long will it take to manufacture a nanowire of infinite length?
Actio personalis moritur cum persona. (Dead men don't sue)
And could you convert that to a unit of cars or library of congresses?
The moment I read the first sentence, the subject of the second sentence popped into my mind. Then I read it.
Heavy sigh.
But it's still progress.
Considering that carbon nanotubes are graphite-like structures first found in the soot of arc discharges, it seems reasonable that an organic nanofiber of the right composition might decompose into a nanotube if strongly heated under the right conditions (almost certainly, for a start, anaerobic ones).
...and here is where I keep assorted lengths of wire!
One of the tags previously on there was "mircro."
Yeah. Must have been all the melange.
Anyone else remember the ornithopters dragging a big loop of shigawire in an assassination attempt? Probably around the Children of Dune / God Emperor time period.
There's only one image I see when I read the word 'nano'. My brain always doubles it up into 'nano nano'.
Am I alone?
Please say I am. I wouldn't wish it on anyone...
Max.
They're NULs (nanowires of unlimited length)... /dev/NUL
Either that, or they've gone to
There's too many jokes here...
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
[geekhat]
actually, I believe it was Heretics of Dune, when Sheeana was on the rooftop of the Priesthood of Rakis's building, and was saved by a Bene Gesserit who I *believe* wound up cut up by the shigawire.. but it's been a little bit since I've read the series, it might've been someone in the Priesthood who got cut up
[/geekhat]
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
Arbitrary length maybe.. unlimited? Not.
Not, unfortunately, carbon nanotubes, or we would be looking for news on space elevators soon.
Carbon nanotubes have a unique structure that gives them amazing strength, conductivity and resilience. These properties, however, only exist at the nanoscale and have never been scaled up. (Ballistic conduction, for instance, usually only occurs for ~100 um.) So the idea that a space elevator will be constructed from CNTs is something of a Popular Science induced myth.
Glavin.
My
I don't think they exist.
Bah! You young whippersnappers!
I'd rather get my silk the old-fashioned way, by milking goats:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/889951.stm
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
So what can we really do with it? Like what is the real world app?
Fear Nothing, Respect Everything. Singer 2006
I know you are joking, but FWIW, they are speaking of potential infinity, not actual infinity :)
Medium cat is MEDIUM.
FTFY.
Space Elevators going up to geosynchronous orbit aren't needed, so carbon nanotubes aren't needed either. We could build a Space Pier - which is a series of towers 100km tall with an accelerator on the top - out of pressurized cylindrical columns made out of boron. (The linked article talks about diamondoid materials, but other researchers have looked into more conventional materials which would allow us to build towers 100km high.) Also, Robert Zubrin has looked into a Hypersonic Skyhook which doesn't extend all the way to the ground or out to geosynch. However, it's a lot easier to design and build a SSTO or TSTO craft that can acheive 100km altitude and 4 or 5 km/s delta-v, as opposed to 8.5 km/s needed for low earth orbit. It is rumored that Burt Rutan's White Knight Two is designed to also launch a higher performance rocket plane that could acheive this. (In addition to the Space Ship Two space tourism craft.)
Is that kind of like a potion of unlimited healing? And more importantly, how many mages can you strangle with a single, unlimitedly long wire?
That's over 2,500 unlimited movies, or 50,000 unlimited mp3s.
Both of which will get you throttled, and reported to the authorities.
It would take three or four Hiroshimas worth of power to spin a single Library of Congress length of nanowire, but amazingly it would only weigh one Escalade despite being able to support five Empire State Buildings. Unfortunately, it would also cost one Medicaid budget per Los Angeles to Sydney length of cable the width of a human hair.
It doesn't have to be very long to be woven into long ropes. Fibers are short, then woven. So it would seem that something 40 cm long could just do the trick.
Twice the distance from the middle of an unlimited sized thread to one of its ends? But how do you find the middle of an unlimited sized thread?
If you can do the same thing with some ultra-strong material, such as spider silk, for instance, this would mean an advancement in materials technology comparable to the invention of steel casting processes.
It is best to use Nanowires of Unlimited Length against the Rodents of Unusual Size.
There's a vas deferens between tubes and wires, one being that tubes usually transmit things *inside* their diameter and wires... oh, hell. Nano wires might be useful for one LCDR Data to deliver his stimulating positronic-originating, nano-pump-boosted shock-waves in a variety of stimulating, articulated positions...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I hope the University of Illinois is working with Stanford on the Nanowire battery: http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2008/january9/nanowire-010908
Let's run one out to Alpha Centauri.
No? I guess "unlimited" was a bit of an overstatement then.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.