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Buckyballs Polymerized Into Buckywires
KentuckyFC writes "Scientists have found a way to join buckyballs together so that they form buckywires. The wires form when buckyballs are dissolved in an aromatic hydrocarbon called 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene. The solvent links the balls together to make wires shaped like a string of pearls, which then precipitate out. This relatively simple procedure opens the door to industrial-scale manufacture. Buckywires ought to be efficient light harvesters because of their great surface area and the way they can conduct photon-liberated electrons. But perhaps the area of greatest interest is drug delivery. The researchers suggest that buckywires ought to be safer than carbon nanotubes because the production method is entirely metal-free. This contrasts with the production of nanotubes, which are formed in a reaction catalyzed by metallic nanoparticles."
So can I get some cheap fishing line that doesn't break now?
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"Bucky Balls create Pearl Necklace"
Who would have guessed?
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If threads are created and those threads are woven into a fabric, then what kind of ballistic applications could we expect? Could panels be made from strands of buckysballs and into new car skins? Aircraft?
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This relatively simple procedure opens the door to industrial-scale manufacture
No, it doesn't. There's no specificity, you can't control the polymerization to the extent needed to build something useful at the nanoscale, the wires are precipitating out of solution because they're attracted to themselves and each other more strongly than they're attracted to the solvent, that's a problem because you have no way of actually building anything with them. That's why people have been doing this sort of things with metal colloids for over a decade and there's been no "industrial-scale" use for them discovered in anything but colloidal form because you're basically just creating fancy-shaped aggregates. Until there's a technology available that will selectively aggregate nanoscale materials into arbitrary shapes (rather than a bunch of copies of the same repeating structure in solution) in a manner where certain shapes and functional units can be fixed to where they need to be on a chip or in a machine there isn't going to be a use.
Interesting chemistry, but to imagine that nanotech has any applications that require more synthetic control than bulk colloids or coatings within the next decade (or 5) is pure hype.
Benzene boiling point 80 degrees C at STP
Iron boiling point 2860 degrees C at STP
It would seem much easier to vacuum distill benzene out of the buckywire product than iron, because of the difference in boiling points. If 80 degrees C is still too hot for buckywires, then vacuum distillation will work at a lower temperature. So the technology to separate the good from the bad is much easier with the benzene process so it'll probably be done better.
Benzene traps are simple cheap and easy to use (well, relatively anyway), whereas nanoparticle "traps" are basically expensive filters that may or may not work and or be maintained, so just blowing filtered N2 thru the product and cleaning the contaminated N2 stream would probably work pretty well. Recycling benzene is simple, but I think all you can do with nanoparticles is bury them or maybe dissolve the whole filter in a super strong acid. So, trapping / recycling bad stuff using the benzene process is much simpler and easier to do, so it'll probably be done better.
Finally monitoring benzene levels (to verify your containment is working, detect when it fails) is pretty trivial, but monitoring nanoparticle contamination levels is pretty much a mystery or at least not standardized. And when you have a spill, the fire department and EPA know exactly what to do with spilled benzene but would be mystified by nanoparticles. So, when the bad stuff inevitably gets released into the environment, "we" know exactly how to handle the benzene process, but not the nanoparticle process.
Making eco-judgements about a chemistry topic, when all you can base it on is sloganeering like benzene is bad, is not going to result in useful judgments.
Benzene and many derivatives, are just as toxic (if not more so) than a lot of metals.
That's about as vague of a "statement" as can be made, but if you really believe it is true, we can set up a little wager and I'll wash my hands in a bucket of pure benzene if you'll agree to wash your hands or any other appendage with a mercury organometallic and we'll see who ends up healthier. Or if you don't like mercury organometallics, I'll let you chose any soluble lead compound. Or, how about a tasty ionic Uranium compound?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Maybe because "buckyballs" is a "pop sci" term and you look funny using it. They are more often called fullerenes.
Example of use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhondite
Fullerenes have little current practical use (they are rather expensive) but a lot of interesting potential uses, because you can trap things inside them: a lot of exotic materials can be made with them. There is even a purely organic compund (a mixed crystal of fullerene and a small organic compound) which exhibits ferromagnetic properties.
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According to the image in the article, the individual buckyballs are linked by SP3 carbons (@-CH2-Phi-CH2-@) from the solvent. This means, there is no pi electron system, and therefore no electrical connectivity, between the buckyball entities. The physical characteristics of this material are vastly different from nanotubes, which are a single extended pi system. I highly doubt that this stuff can be a replacement for any application which requires long-distance electron flow, such as light harvesting, microelectronics, etc.
The bonding is controlled by both the thermodynamics of the multi-bonded fullerenes, as well as the kinetics involved in multiple crosslinkings, forcing fullerenes next to each other. If you read the actual article, the evidence suggests that the fullerenes are slowly polymerizing, and crosslinking - an NMR spectrum after several months implies that it actually is one, big, horrible mess (or not fullerenes anymore, depending on how skeptical you are of this).
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