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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."
"Bucky Balls create Pearl Necklace"
Who would have guessed?
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From: (PDF warning) http://www.davis-floyd.com/USERIMAGES/File/Bucky%20balls%20Fullereness%20and%20the%20future.pdf
being the strong, macroscopic person that you are, you get a hold of this, and you stretch it and stretch it and stretch it, and before it breaks you can stretch it to 20 or 30 percent longer than it was to begin with. The tensile strength is very high.
The indication is that when it finally does break, it doesn't break brittly but pulls out a little chain of carbon atoms the break is a plastic failure, not a brittle failure. One thing that we do know from actual tubes that have been made and distorted, is that you can take this tube and you can bend it. You can bend it so much that it buckles like a soda straw and then when you let go, it just snaps right back it does not break.
So, any tube, like the soda straw, as you begin to bend it, the material of the soda straw at the top of the bend has to stretch and underneath, on the inside of the bend, so that the bending stiffness of it depends on just how hard it is to stretch that material and this is the hardest material in the universe to stretch, so the stiffness of this little nanotube will be higher than any other object you can build out of the tinker toy set, forever and anon.