Rice Contracted to Provide NASA's Quantum Wire

geekman writes "NASA is paying Rice University $11 million to build a prototype quantum wire that can conduct electricity 10 times better than traditional copper cables at one-sixth the weight. Rice has four years to build a one-meter-long quantum wire, which will be made out of carbon nanotubes. Seems like a lot of money for a little wire, but then again, all the rocket scientists at Los Alamos have only ever been able to put together a four-centimeter nanotube."

Reference and extra-info

[Spy der Mann]

For those who didn't read the past article on quantum wires [slashdot.org], here it is.

And for those who don't know what an armchair nanotube is, here are some images [mtu.edu] (The armchair nanotube is the one in the middle).

Re:Ballistic Conduction

[IWannaBeAnAC]

No, quantum wires have a resistance that increases logarithmically with the length, rather than linearly for normal (ohmic) wires.

Exactly zero resistance would be an ideal conductor. I don't think there are any examples of ideal conductors that are not also superconductors, which implies low temperature.

Go Owls

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sitting about three blocks from the Rice Campus & I'm a Rice grad, so pardon me for cheering 'em on.

This actually makes (some) sense - Dick Smalley & Robert Curl on the Rice faculty (and a 3rd guy in England) won that trivial little prize - the Nobel in Chemistry for basically inventing/discovering the buckyball and related carbon nano stuff - or something like that. I also seem to recall that Smalley also has done pretty well in acually being able to manufacture buckyballs.

Also, there is a long history of collaberation between NASA and Rice. Starting before the Apollo program. I had a professor at Rice who designed experiment packages that went to the moon in the Apollo program.

So, if NASA was going to award a contract or grant to somebody for this, Rice does make some sense.

Also, kind of interesting that President Kennedy gave the famous speech "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard..." on the Rice campus.

It's a proof of concept

[andrewzx1]

If Nobel lareat Smalley and his lab can build a proof of concept of the Carbon nanotube superwire, it would be worth far more than a few million $. This kind of technology would seriously revolutionize Western society. With a super wire you can build electic motors that are both many times stronger at the same power, and are much more efficient. The resulting stepping motors would revolutionize robotics. The wires would change how we deliver power, and even possibly, basic electrical circuitry. Imagine high current density superconductor wires at room temperature.

Carbon nanotubules, when properly, manufactured could also have very high tensile strength. Many times stronger than stranded steel cable and weighing less as well. This is the technology people what it use to build the space elevator.

Of course, after proof of concept there are still many challenges to cost effective manufacturing.

There are a dozen revolutionary uses for super wires. But first we need a proof of concept. FYI - I'm looking for a job at a well-funded nanotech startup. Many qualificiations, inquire within!

Re:Seems like a lot of money for a little wire,

[ErikTheRed]

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Linkage [somethingawful.com].

A quote from within said piece to entice your fancy:

Of course these wires cost nearly as much as the DVD player itself, even more if you include the Monster-brand power filtration adapting converter unit which instantly converts your cash into lines of high grade Columbian cocaine for the company's CEO.

Re:Further strains on my loyalty to my alma mater?

[ErikTheRed]

My basic reaction is that superconducting approaches make much more sense. Weight is pretty much not a factor for normal usages. When the quantity of electricity involved is large enough that the weight does become a factor, then you're probably thinking of power transmission lines, and in that scenario you can consider the tradeoff for seriously large amounts of power. I can imagine a small refrigerated tunnel containing a high-temperature ceramic semiconductor and carrying extremely large amounts of electricity with very little lossage.

Ummmm, dude, NASA is the one setting up the grant. That would imply that they're thinking about using it in spacecraft, satellites, probes, etc. where weight is a huge fucking deal.

From TFA:

"This is a small step but a very significant one from our perspective, as we try to develop new technology that will help us as we send humans out from Earth and into space," said Jefferson Howell Jr., director of NASA's Johnson Space Center.
...
NASA hopes to outfit future spacecraft with quantum wires rather than heavier copper wires. Doing so could shave critical pounds, which would save money on fuel and, ultimately, allow the craft to go farther into space.
...
Some engineers have also talked about building a 62,000-mile-long tether made of nanotubes for a space elevator that would carry astronauts and cargo into orbit.

Sorry, but you missed the point by about a lightyear.

Re:More poorly spent money...

[Anonymous Coward]

Rice is obviously a leading pioneer in the field, nanotubes are Rice's specialty, and there's no reason to have a bounty when you have a Nobel Prize winner working on it.

May be you should read more than Forbes and Wall street. Just because Smalley got nobel prize doesn't mean he is smart all the time. Yes his nobel prize work was good, but if you have been to a recent DARPA contract meetings, he is stripped out for flaws in his arguments.

Also Rice is not the leader in nanotubes. They don't even have the best nanotechnology facility out there. It is not even part of NNIN (national nanotechnology infrastructure network) which does more interesting things. Yes again Dr. Smalley chose not to join the network because according to him colloboration has too much overhead.

Re:It's a proof of concept

[aXis100]

The main limitations on electic motors is heat - the wires will melt once you start pushing too much power.

With more conductive wires, you can get higher currents and thus higher power for the same size motor. Losses will be about the same becasue you'll just scale your motors to a suitable heat level again.

Higher power/weight ratios will make everything else that uses them lighter and more efficient.

Re:60 times better?

[pavon]

The point is that given two wires with the same cross sectional area the quantum wire will be 10 times better and 1/6th the weight compared to the copper wire. It wouldn't make much sense to compare wires of different sizes as you suggest.

Re:It's a proof of concept

[ramblin billy]

The dudes at Rice invented 3 of the 4 current methods for producing buckytubes. Their current research involves the use of catalysts applied to the end of existing tubes which results in "cloning" the tube, allowing for unprecedented control of the tubes characteristics. Here [house.gov] are some of Smalley's comments on buckytubes...

"These single walled carbon nanotubes are uniquely specified by two small integers, n and m. The diameter is roughly proportional to the sum, n+m. The electronic properties, however, are determined by the difference, n-m. If n and m are the same, then n-m=0 and the tube conducts electrons like a perfect metal. In the trade it is called and "arm-chair" tube. Electrons move down this tube as a coherent quantum particle, traveling down the tube much like a photon of light travels down a single mode optic fiber. Individual armchair tubes can conduct as much as 20 microamps of current. This doesn't sound like much until you realize that his little molecular wire is only 1 nanometer in diameter. A half inch thick cable made of these tubes aligned parallel to each other along the cable, would have over 100 trillion conductors packed side-by-side like pipes in a hardware store. If each of these tubes carried only one microamp, only 2 percent of its capacity, the half inch thick cable would be carrying one hundred millions amps of current. Fabricating such a cable - we call it the "armchair quantum wire" - is a prime objective of our work."

Buckytubes exceed the strength of carbon fiber (30 to 100 times that of steel), the thermal transfer ability of diamonds, and are the best electrical conductor of any molecule known. They promise great advances not only for the transmission of energy, but also for energy storage (including hydrogen), composite fabrics, and even solar power. The world's leading producer of buckytubes is Carbon Nanotechnologies Incorporated [cnanotech.com], a Houston based spin-off from Rice. In the computer category, IBM [ibm.com] has already announced the successful manufacture of buckytube transistors. It may not be all that long until we start to see some real world applications that begin to fulfill the exalted "gee whiz" promise of nanotechnology. And I'm not talking about facial creams.

billy - no...they are NOT calling the transistor 'little blue'