Buckyballs Polymerized Into Buckywires 71
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."
Again with the journalist hype... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Doesn't this stuff have to be high quality? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Effect on computing (Score:2, Insightful)
I think you are jumping beyond the article (Score:2, Insightful)
I believe the item you quoted refers to industrial-scale manufacture of the buckywires themselves.
While a number of possible applications are mentioned, none are anything more than speculation and neither of the two named (photovoltaics and drug-delivery) require the specificity you mention.
One only needs to be able to "selectively aggregate nanoscale materials into arbitrary shapes" if one is making a complex nano-scale object. That is not what is mentioned in this article nor is it even implied.