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Large Sheets of Carbon Nanotubes Produced
StCredZero brings news that scientists have developed sheets of nanotubes that measure up to three feet by six feet, and they promise "slabs 100 square feet in area as soon as this summer." The developers see uses for the sheets in electromagnetic shields and airplane construction, and according to the Next Big Future blog, the sheets could also impact the development of solar sails.
"The sheets, which the company can produce on its single machine at a rate of one per day, are composed of a series of nanotubes each about a millimeter long, overlapping each other randomly to form a thin mat. The tensile strength of the mat ranges from 200 to 500 megapascals--a measure of how tough it is to break. A sheet of aluminum of equivalent thickness, for comparison, has a strength of 500 megapascals. If Nanocomp takes further steps to align the nanotubes, the strength jumps to 1,200 megapascals."
But why not just use aluminium?
Rudimentary quantum computing can be done with the ballistic nature of how electrons flow through a sheet of graphene, or in this case, a carbon nanotube. Expect to see computing related articles.
If you don't understand what it mean to say that electrons move in a "ballistic" manner through these nanotubes, imagine that cool trick your math teach showed you in high school with marbles and pegs making a bell curve. Now imagine being able to change the outcome by removing a lot of peg, and then making your computer understand the results.
So, on average even aluminum is stronger than this material? Aluminum is a very soft metal. It must be a mistake in the article...
composed of a series of nanotubes
Wait, hold on... I thought we were talking about the internet... ?
If this stuff is as strong as aluminum, why aren't we using it to actually build things like cars and buildings?
Has anyone leaked the details of how their process works beyond the little 'teaser' in the article? Could it be scaled down to personal size? Im thinking it would be great to add their process to a home 3D printer.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Conceivably now a big truck AND the Internet could be fabricated out of a series of tubes!
Airplane Photos, Airline News, Planespotting Guides
seriesofnanotubes
Do we really want an airplane that will explode if some coherent light hits it?
"I drank what?" - Socrates
(First off I work in this area) I know one we have tried purchasing these sheets in the past a couple time and have not been able to. They might be able to make them but the availability is still very low for any research or products.
to replace my tinfoil hat...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I didn't see any price tag in the article. Everything depends now on that I guess. If it comes cheap then horray, to infinity and beyond we go !
I want my next MacBook to be made out of this stuff.
I'm much more excited about the possibilities for hydrogen storage rather than new construction material.
Poke around a bit and see what I mean.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
It seems you're correct correct- do you suppose they've gotten around this?
Those of us who think they know everything annoy those of us who do.
A genetic algorithm is a great way to optimize a set of parameters. If they can find a way to test parameter sets quickly this would be a great opportunity to use a GA to find the best parameters, especially given that there's so many of them.
Bauxite isn't even a mineral. It's just a common industrial name for a kind of rock that includes a variety of minerals and is the most efficient way to produce aluminum using existing technologies. Any clay soil contains large quantities of aluminum. When the great clay shortage hits, I'm sure we'll have plenty of advance notice.
First off, they don't explode all at once, they explode tube by tube and the explosions are very small. It takes a fairly powerful direct laser strike to cause this to happen. I.E. a hand-held laser pointed at a plane will be about as useful as shooting a BB gun at it.
Second... I guess you've never heard of... paint.
And finally... not all carbon nanotubes are created equally.
FUD.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
They beat us to physics, but if we can finish the space elevator we still have a chance! :p
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
If they make the tubes longer, the tensile strength could go WAY up from there...
(source: wikipedia.)
No. CNTs are only strong in one direction, and you need at least two directions for a space elevator. If you tried, it would crumple or fall over.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
It depends a lot on the properties of the material. For example, while aluminum sheets are made of microscopic crystals, there is little danger of breathing significant amounts of aluminum unless you spend a lot of work processing it into a fine powder first. These sheets may be the same way. Who knows? We don't.
First off, they might only have great tensile strength in one direction, but in this case they are randomly oriented. So the measured tensile strength of the sheet should apply in any direction. But that is probably not relevant to a space elevator anyway, because:
A space elevator does not "stand" on the ground, bearing all that weight. Rather, the space end is at sufficient distance to PULL it up (considerably higher than synchronous-orbit height). The elevator is under tension, not compression. And the vast majority of that tension is in one direction!
...you Brits invented the language.
We Americans perfected it.
*ducks*
So, we have to have a way to produce h2 economically, which is normally just stripping it from natural gas and then releasing CO2. Assuming that we can find a cheap way to split water (which we do not have yet), then you have the issue of conversion. Assume a ICE for this. Basically, you have the same damnable low efficency of a gas or diesel ICE. Of course, we can do Fuel cells, but they are expensive and require constant maintenence. All in all, by the time that these systems come about, The world will be on electric cars and trucks. As it is, white star, the volt, and hopefully a GM adopted version of Telsa will be making the rounds by 2010. At that point, few will want something as inefficient as hydrogen.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
So this is 1-2GPa tensile strength. We need about 60-100GPa tensile strength for a space elevator.
I strongly suspect that the tensile strength quoted is actually a typo by the reporter. Either that or he got his facts seriously wrong. It is unfathomable to me how a sheet of carbon nanotubes would be LESS strong than an equivalent sheet of aluminum. And any company that created such a wimpy sheet of nanotubes sure wouldn't be boasting about it.
Peter
and it's within 2 orders of magnitude to get there. Not too bad. Shouldn't be too hard to engineer, or tweak it to get there.
..........FULL STOP.
It would be IF they could accurately predict the outcome of a given formulation. But that assumption may not hold if our knowledge of these materials' properties is insufficient.
.sig withheld by request
If you can make CNT sheets with the CNT aligned in one uniform direction, you could alternate the orientation of the sheets and glue them together ala plywood.
Pulled up toward the mass well above the synchronous orbit altitude, by centrifugal force, not gravitational force.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Yes, aluminum is readily available, but this carbon-based material will reach 1200 soon, which means (probably) that it will reach 3000 shortly... Assuming they get funding. Also, what about the weight difference? Do we have details on that? Aluminum isn't heavy, but probably heavier than this type of material. Since weight is one of the most critical aspects related to space travel (COST!), this could be huge if the weight is a small percentage of aluminum. Then again, what about Kevlar? S
At one sheet per day, in a startup? Figure the annual burn of the company and divide by 365.
This takes me back to the Star Trek movie with the whales. I hear "carbon" and think "black" like some of the bubbly experiments my science teacher showed. How possible is it for this stuff to be transparent/translucent? Is this the science that is the RL equivalent of the Star Trek fictional "transparent aluminum?" Simply in 40 years the "base" cutting edge technology went from super metals to super microfibers.
"I got it all together but I forgot where I put it."
also what about the next step after the plywood type of cnt-sheets, woven cnts.
These tube thingys are made of something they call " Carbon ", am I right?
And they may be made stronger than that " Aluminum " stuff?
So... if they make beer cans from these, are we going to have to use those " Glass " beer bottles when nobody can open the cans?
Also, if they are made of this " Carbon " stuff, where are they going to get a clean source of " Carbon "?
If I understand the media reports, we ( humans ) are just storing a whole lot of it in the air all around the planet ( with some of that " Oxygen " stuff).
So.. if I patent the idea of collecting this " Carbon Oxygen Oxygen " from the air in any fashion whatsoever, I can sue every plant in the world for infringement, and make the worlds governments pay me?
( Well the PLANTS don't have money you silly people, so Somebody will have to pay the money. Unless money really DOES grow on trees.)
( now why would i be posting anonymously? hmmmm )
> If Nanocomp takes further steps to align the nanotubes, the strength jumps to 1,200 megapascals."
anyone who knows how much we need for our space elevator???
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
Well you could paint it.
...is very important because it paves the way to make highly-advanced products that use carbon nanotubes.
:-)
The best example of this are supercapacitor batteries that use carbon nanotubes to dramatically increase the storage capacity of the battery itself. That could make it possible for real plug-in hybrid vehicles with extremely long range or even the possibility by 2020 of a fully-electric vehicle that could seat 4-5 passenger comfortably yet have a range of around 400 km with charging times essentially the same as the time needed to fill a 16-20 gallon fuel tank on a medium-sized family car!
The truth is, wonder materials that are not yet in real production never actually turn out to be that wonderful. Aluminium has not replaced cast iron in many applications. Cars and ships continue to be made of mild steel. Titanium has not replaced aluminium in aircraft. Both Airbus and Boeing are struggling to make large composite airframes and wings.
When I hear a technology being touted as useful for some application that does not yet exist (such as solar sails) my bullshit detector switches up 6 ranges and still goes into overload. If a new technology does not offer significant benefits on an established volume engineering problem, it will fail to get traction.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
>>
For example, while aluminum sheets are made of microscopic crystals, there is little danger of breathing significant amounts of aluminum unless you spend a lot of work processing it into a fine powder first.
>>
Step one: reduce the aluminium sheets until they fit in a BlendTec blender.
Step two: turn blender on.
Step three: dump out on table, being careful to avoid aluminium nanosmoke.
Step four: play annoying end of video sound.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Just thought id point out aluminium doesn't have an ultimate tensile strength of 500 MPa. Depending on heat treatment, you might be lucky to get 500 MPa, but usually it's close to 200-300 MPa.