Carbon Nanotubes

As a follow up to last issue’s article on Nano Technology, I would like to focus specifically on Carbon Nanotubes.The combination of high thermal conductivity, high electrical conductivity, and extremely high tensile strength, makes carbon nanotubes a versatile tool for improving existing technologies as well as opening many new possibilities for technological advances. Graphene and Fullerenes are closely related to carbon nanotubes. All of them are considered to be Allatropes of Carbon

Aside from our main topic, there is a SciFi series with a great female heroin, where one of the stories (titled Allotropes) covers many fanciful things that could be done with these materials. The following article will try to cover the several real world applications that have been found for carbon nanotubes and its relatives (I hope at least a bit exciting?).

The first question is: “How do I get some carbon nanotubes?” Well, if you don’t want make them your self, you can buy various carbon materials, including nanotubes, from someone like CheapTubes.com. They also provide a comprehensive discussion of their products. On the other hand, if you really want to make some of your very own, there are several articles on the subject. One of the more recent advances is explained in patent number US7556789 B2 titled Low temperature synthesis of carbon nanotubes. Similar research by the US Air Force is outlined in an article by The Royal Society of Chemistry. While these technique are probably still out of the each of most of us, the more traditional high temperature method is explained at Wiki-Answers and Mad Scientist, Jr. in rather general terms. You can find better descriptions on YouTube. What this boils down to, is the need for a vacuum chamber, a carbon arc, possibly carbon and several powdered metals, and you can make these materials for yourself. While this is a bit of an investment for an individual, a start up company will not find this to be a large investment.

Once we have some carbon nanotubes, what sort of things might we expect to build using them? The range of applications is staggering; The enhancing of the Edison Battery, accomplished by Stanford University Research using carbon nanotubes; Improving the efficiency of photo voltaic cells using single walled carbon nanotubes; They are being used to store thermal energy for later release; Methods are being developed to spin yarn from carbon nanotubes with both high tensile strength and high conductivity; Single molecule transistors can be made from carbon nanotubes.

All of the examples above are for Single Walled Carbon Nano Tunes, as depicted in the introductory image. Multiple Walled Carbon Nano Tubes are also possible:

Double Walled Nano Tubes could be used to make transistors, as described by the image below:

This image comes from an article by Signa-Aldrich another company selling carbon nanotubes.

While this technology is very new, a quick Google search will find lots of companies already producing carbon nanotubes and products using them. You can already buy high strengh, high conductivity carbon nanotube threads, which begs the question:”How far are we from a space elevator?” This may only be the tip of the iceberg. Light weight, high strength materials will make many things possible that never were before. I grew up in the pre-extruded-plastic world of the 50s where remote controlled toys were thousands of dollars and way out of reach. Yet my children played with remote controlled toys that cost 10s of dollars because they were made with plastic, a cheap easily molded material that was unavailable in my childhood. Carbon Nanotubes have the potential to revolutionize the kinds of toys our children’s children will grow up with! The potential uses for this material are mind boggling! It isn’t a super conductor, but its pretty close. Stronger and lighter than anything else this easy to make, carbon nanotubes, and their flatter cousin graphene, are in a class of very useful materials, and the possibilities are just beginning to be explored.

2 thoughts on “Carbon Nanotubes”

    1. The site was an HTML experiment for several years. Then last year I converted it to WordPress so I could get some features without having to build them. Nice to know I have at least one reader 😉

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