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Nanotubes Start to Show their Promise 329
Rei writes "Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas have developed the highest quality nanotube sheets to date (the team previously set strength records with polymer-nanotube composites). Producable at a rate comparable to commercial wool spinning, the transparent cloth has exceedingly high conductivity, flexibility, has huge surface area to volume ratios, can potentially be made into very effective OLEDs and thin-film photovoltaic cells, and outperforms even our best bulk materials (such as Mylar and Kevlar) at strength normalized to weight. It strongly absorbs microwaves for localized heating (leading to applications in seamless microwave welding of sections and even windshield warming), changes conductivity little over a wide temperature range (very useful in sensors), and is expected to be used in commercial applications very soon. The research should even be expandable to artificial muscles! To head people off, while the exact tensile strength is not listed, it sounds like it is still far from the >100 GPa needed for a space elevator. Anyways, here's to process advancements!"
Near first post (Score:2, Funny)
Hurm... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh good. I wonder how much it will cost for a packet of laser printer paper made of this stuff?
I could use something snazzy for my resume.
Re:Hurm... (Score:5, Funny)
of course, the ink will be the most expensive type of fluid with built-in DRM!
Re:Hurm... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hurm... (Score:2, Insightful)
Miracle (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Miracle (Score:5, Funny)
Just like Jesus!
Re:Miracle (Score:2)
No, he was real, just a little crazy [mental-hea...atters.com].
Re:Miracle (Score:2, Funny)
Funny... (Score:2, Informative)
Space elevators (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do they say they're going to enter the material into some space elevator competition at the end of the article then?
Re:Space elevators (Score:5, Insightful)
Emphasis mine. Seems to suggest that they think they're not too far away from it, so you're not totally off the mark, but we all know that the last few tweaks can be the bit that don't work, relegating this to other uses...
Re:Space elevators (Score:5, Insightful)
It used to be Who What When Where and How, now it's May Might Could HelpTo and SomeDay.
Re:Space elevators (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Space elevators (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Space elevators (Score:3, Interesting)
It's taken a very long time to get here (I was just a kid at the time), and I pretty much have always dismissed the idea of space elevators, but it's kinda neat to see that the concept is evolving along the same vein as over two decades ago.
*(CSSS merged
Not science fiction according to IEEE Spectrum (Score:5, Interesting)
Space elevators will never work (Score:2, Interesting)
A space elevator is going to require a truly civilisation shaking level of investment by a country. Then, once it's built that investment has to be amortized over it's lifetime, but wait, it only has two end points and it takes a certain amount of time to load and unload a vehicle of cargo and passengers, it takes a certain amount of time to travel the distance up to orbit. These two fundamental physical limitations will m
Re:Space elevators will never work (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Space elevators will never work (Score:2)
That's simply not true. Read the calculations done by Edwards. Basically, the more affordable the elevator is is almost completely premised on one technological factor: how strong your ribbon is per unit weight. Nobody is proposing building a space elevator with, say, a 10 GPa ribbon, because the launch cost for even a preliminary ribbon. On the other hand, if you have a 120 GPa ribbon, the launch cost is trivial. Yet, both hold the same amount of payload - one is just the tiniest fraction of the total
Re:Space elevators will never work (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a big difference between an up-only cable and an up-down cable - up-down allows for easy energy exchange, better utilization of cable bearing strength, and lower capital costs (than two separate cables), bu
Re:Space elevators will never work (Score:3, Informative)
First one is wrong regarding total payload mass. I'd do math to refute the statement, but it has already been done. http://trs.nis.nasa.gov/archive/00000535/ [nasa.gov]
And yeah, the travel time will likely be few days. So what? You can get to LEO in a matter of hours once everything has been built out and systems put in place to deal with any whiplash effects that jumping off before the steady-state altitude.
And it isn't 50K miles to Geo -- it is about 24K miles. I point this out s
Re:Space elevators (Score:2)
Does this mean? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Does this mean? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Does this mean? (Score:2)
Re:Does this mean? (Score:2, Funny)
Better just hope that... (Score:2)
tm
Re:Better just hope that... (Score:2)
Re:Does this mean? (Score:2)
The Emperor's New Clothes (Score:2)
Maybe, but with a description like this...
flexible screens..? (Score:5, Funny)
Or, from the article, and perhaps of more interest to us:
"flexible computer screens that could be rolled into a sack"
Haven't we been promised this for years? I wanna roll up my computer screen & carry it into my flying car!
Re:flexible screens..? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:flexible screens..? (Score:2)
Never mind that. (Score:2)
Re:flexible screens..? (Score:2)
No, not possible. But, you can carry your LCD monitor into your PT cruiser:-).
Re:flexible screens..? (Score:2)
Re:flexible screens..? (Score:2)
How about... (Score:5, Interesting)
I know tfa says that it will be efficient, but does that take the cost into perspective? It's not unusual to hear about a new idea that is totally ground braking in several fields, then the research on the commercial fades out, because they find out that it's too pricey. A lot of products was that way in the beginning. Just look at LCD screens etc.
Well. That being said. This sound awesome, I'd like to see it developed...
Re:How about... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cost is irrelevant (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Cost is irrelevant (Score:2)
Plus they would also have to get the material approved to show that when they collide with something it should shatter into millions of tiny particle like the current carbon fiber does.
Then there is the actual testing of the fuselages to get them all approved.
I would really love to see it, but there is also the fact that the cost of running an f1 team is going up and up. While the organise
Re:Cost is irrelevant (Score:2)
Re:Cost is irrelevant (Score:2)
The engineers that work with composite material in formula 1 are some of the best in the world. They use carbon material for the housing of the transmission instead of metal. Well they really made it half metal / half c
Re:Cost is irrelevant (Score:2)
I think it's time alchemy made a comeback!
Producable at a rate... (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunate about the space elevator. Looks like the highest we've gone is 63 GPa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensile_strength [wikipedia.org])
Re:Producable at a rate... (Score:2)
The certain rate at which it's producable would be the rate at which wool is woven commercially. Come on, man. Get with the program.
The steps involved [wool.com] in the wool-producing process include
In the year 2000, the US wool-making industry produced 46.5 million pounds of wool, averaging out to 3.875 million pounds per month. Obviously the rates of wool production vary greatly with the season. In fact [woolgrowers.org], more than half of American-produced wool is shorn
100 GPa in perspective (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, wonderous progress! (Score:5, Funny)
Super, I envision the day where I can replace my tin-foil hat with a nanotube beret.
Re:Oh, wonderous progress! (Score:2)
Re:Oh, wonderous progress! (Score:2)
I obviously don't know enough about Faraday cages, but would it have to cover you "completely?" Like could you have openings for hands, feet, and especially face with it still working as intended?
Wow..... (Score:3, Funny)
and outperforms even our best bulk materials (such as Mylar and Kevlar) at strength normalized to weight. It strongly absorbs microwaves for localized heating
Should be interesting to see the day when a drug dealer overrides the safety interlock on his microwave and points it at nanotube body armour wearing DEA officials during a bust.
Should bring a new meaning to the phrase "hot tits"
Re:Wow..... (Score:2)
Ummm, that doesn't even begin to sound safe. (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, I'm going to have a microwave generator going in my car, aiming the the windshield, just to warm it up. That's got to be safe right?
Just a shame we can't do something slightly safer, like send a small electric currents through tiny wires, or blow hot air at it.
But oh no... we have to shoot microwaves through our cars instead.
Re:Ummm, that doesn't even begin to sound safe. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be silly. It'll just use the ambient microwave radiation we're pouring out now for communications. I'm more worried that with the windshield absorbing all the microwaves my coffee will no longer stay warm in the car.
Re:Ummm, that doesn't even begin to sound safe. (Score:2)
I think there is something wrong with your coffee maker or your water. Coffee does not, under normal operating conditions, emit microwaves.
Re:Ummm, that doesn't even begin to sound safe. (Score:3)
Re:Ummm, that doesn't even begin to sound safe. (Score:2)
Space elevator time... (Score:5, Funny)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stoptheelevator/ [yahoo.com]
Why they are weaker (Score:5, Informative)
In this case, when they are weaving fibers together, the weakness in tensile strength will come from the interface between linked nanotubes which will have a tensile strength many orders of magnitude than that of an individual tube.
waiting... (Score:2, Insightful)
,
Hmmm, hasn't that been the case for the past decade? That's what my inner cynic says, anyway. Just like the fuel cell revolution, not to mention the nuclear fusion revolution.
there should be a revolution any day now...
Also.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Good bye disposables (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Good bye disposables (Score:5, Funny)
Underpants wear out?
Stealth material? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Stealth material? (Score:2)
If it absorbs microwaves and heats up, it will be visible to infrared.
Ah, anything that absorbs microwaves will heat up. Conservation of energy kind of makes this the case for all materials. The amount of energy hitting a plane from radar is pretty damn small so I doubt it would emit a measureable amount of IR. It isn't like you fly these planes in a microwave.
the key ingredient to this all: (Score:5, Funny)
again proof that duct tape can make anything work!
Soon we will have duct tape made out of this nanotubes, after that, who knows or even dares to dream!!!
Re:the key ingredient to this all: (Score:2)
Dallas Morning News - Article and Video (Score:2, Informative)
Article URL: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/lat estnews/stories/081905dnmetnanosheet.1c9439ac.html [dallasnews.com]
Video URL: http://www.dallasnews.com/s/dws/spe/2005/nanotech/ [dallasnews.com]
---------
LITTLE CREATION, BIG STEP
UTD team's chemical ribbons could assist many high-tech dreams
09:01 PM CDT on Thursday, August 18, 2005
By SUE GOETINCK AMBROSE / The Dallas Morning News
Scientists from
Specific strength (Score:3, Informative)
Specific strength is the term they are looking for, second it is normalized to mass, not weight.
Suggest to me someone with little science/engineering background "wrote" the article, and just listed off the interesting stuff they 'heard about nanotubes'
Re:Specific strength (Score:2)
Specific strength is the term they are looking for, second it is normalized to mass, not weight.
Maybe they were trying to target a nonscientific audience. To Joe sixpack Specific strength means nothing, and weight is the same thing as mass(assuming Joe has a vaguely idea about what the word mass means)
Joe Sixpack (Score:2, Insightful)
I do find it odd that you'd expect someone who doesn't know that weight and mass are different would know what 'normalized' means.
Depending on the target audience I would have said either
High specific strength or
Good strength/weight ratio
I'll stand by my initial statement that this is a junk article.
Re:Specific strength (Score:2)
Sounds great... (Score:3, Interesting)
Does the article summary mean... (Score:2)
Re:Does the article summary mean... (Score:2)
Sheet tensile strength (Score:5, Informative)
They also built an OLED of 500 cd/m^2 with a onset voltage of 2.4V.
But will it slice bread? (Score:2)
I'm pleased to see that these things are getting ready to move into a sort of production phase but really wonder what applications they will find themseves in? If some conventional prduction method produces a product of acceptable quality, I don't see carbon nanotubes making much of a dent in thes
Re:But will it slice bread? (Score:5, Informative)
I am a chemist, I work in the "nanotechnology" field, and I have spent time in Engineering/MS labs making OLEDs, PV cells, and other thin film devices. Many of "us" consider nanotubes to be the only viable "nanotechnology" at the moment because of the fact that they can be used by spraying thin layers, making entangled sheets, or other easy-to-commercialize methods of preparation. As for the hybperbole, I think the fact that you're reading an article on MSNBC should give you a clue : ) If you read the Science article they make essentially none of the claims present in the MSNBC article. In fact all they really claim is a new method for preparing NT sheets that is way better than the current methods used for preparing NT 'paper' (it really looks and feels like paper).
Yes, nanotubes are cool. Yes, they conduct electricity. Yes, they emit white light in an OLED configuration. I'm not 100% sure where they're getting the artificial muscle thing, but from what I've read (from peer reviewed journals) don't hold your breath - but I'm no expert there. What generally happens here is the inventors like to hype their discovery up (in this case a method for preparing better NT sheets) as much as possible, but in "science speak". That is, this "may be used for ___" or "has the potential for ___" and then they rattle off stuff NTs can be used for which gets all mixed up in the in article. In this case NT sheets are nothing new and most of what they're claiming has been done before (IBM even got light out of a single NT, far more impressive if you ask me), but they're doing it better with higher quality NT sheets. When it was discovered that poly(aniline) had great mechanical properties as well as interesting "chemical switching" and conductive properties there were people that were sure it was going to be used in planes, clothes, computers... You name it. Too bad it is deliquescent - D'Oh. I can't remember whether this happened before or after the discovery that poly(acetylene) had a high tensile strength and people were claiming space elevators, lightweight electric motors, etc etc. Too bad it catches fire in air in its conductive form - D'Oh D'Oh.
At the end of the day this is another step towards some real nanotechnology applications, but you're reading about it because the editors at Science decided it was worth publishing. Only in the Science article they include all the references to the past work that made it possible :) Oh, and the microwave thing is neat because the NTs will spark like crazy in your microwave oven. So will graphite, which you can try at home if you like... If you don't know NTs are essentially "rolled up" graphite sheets, so they share a lot of common properties.
Here is the abstract:
So what they did was create sheets
Re:But will it slice bread? (Score:2)
Can I ask you a layman's question? What are the first products that consumers are likely to see made out of this technology? When are we likely to see them in production?
Once again, thank you very much for your reply. I really appreciate it.
Uses! (Score:3, Insightful)
Super strong light weight helmets.
Homebuilt aircraft.
Bicycles.
It just goes on and on.
The fact it is transparent, conductive, and absorbs microwaves makes me think that we will see a lot of it uses for RAM coatings on ships and aircraft.
I can also see it being used for anti rf wall paper and and windows in secure buildings.
All in all very cool.
Need For Speed (Score:3, Insightful)
Assuming the product eventually exceeds 100 GPa, at this rate it would take over 27 years to produce a 100,000 km ribbon in one piece. Since that timescale would be impractical, I figure they should aim for at least a meter per second, which would allow them to do it in a little over three years instead. On the other hand, they could also, for example, set up 30 production lines to work at the current speed, run them all for about a year and then glue the segments together using the extra length for overlap. However, that would add extra volume and make it heavier (remember that the first ribbon has to go up on a rocket).
ok, what's the downside? (Score:2)
LS
Re:Still lot of carbon... (Score:2)
However maybe it helps with conservation of entropy
Re:Still lot of carbon... (Score:3, Insightful)
Even in GR, the stress-energy tensor has zero divergence.
Re:Still lot of carbon... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Still lot of carbon... (Score:2)
Re:more efficient then a car engine? (Score:2)
Is there any common direct conversion of chemical energy to mechanical other than the internal combustion engine?
I guess coal-, gas- and oil-fired power plants convert chemical energy to mechanical (and then to electrial) but those aren't very portable. I also don't know whether any of them are internal-combustion on a grand scale or how efficient they are.
Re:more efficient then a car engine? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes
Gas turbines.
Rockets.
Ram Jets.
Pulse jets.
Re:more efficient then a car engine? (Score:2)
Re:more efficient then a car engine? (Score:2)
Re:It'll never be built (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It'll never be built (Score:2)
Re:It'll never be built (Score:2)
Launch 100 rockets at 100 bucks per rocket and you've paid $10,000. Launch 100 elevators at at $1 per use and you've paid $100. Point is, which method is cheaper depends on the relative costs of the two methods.
Space Shuttles run $1 billion per launch. Since we don't know how much the elevator will cost to build or operate, $1 per launch is as good a number as any right
Re:Spider webs (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Over-simplifying? (Score:3, Informative)
Nope. I saw this presented last month at an Air Force program review, and it is exactly what they say. For example, they showed pictures of 1 m long ribbons, where the length was limited by the length of the postdoc's arm who manually pulled the sheets from the nanotube "forest".
Next will be... (Score:2)
Re:Next will be... (Score:2)
Re:About time. (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, if you had been part of the effort, it would've happened twice as fast. But you obviously had other priorities, and I'm sure I speak for all of us here when I express my deep appreciation for taking a little of your precious time to share your insight with Slashdot.