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."
Effect on computing (Score:2, Interesting)
Applications? (Score:4, Interesting)
metal free...? (Score:3, Interesting)
Metal free production is nice, but in the end, it's not just what is used in production, but how you take out the undesirable things.
Benzene and many derivatives, are just as toxic (if not more so) than a lot of metals.
Re:metal free...? (Score:3, Interesting)
You mean apart from the nano-scale bucky balls and particles of them themselves?
I don't think anyone has (or could) ever really test(ed) the effects of that stuff on your body and genetics.
In the end, we will do what we always do. We will try it out on the people. And if it fails, someone will continue... Monsanto style.
Re:Applications? (Score:5, Interesting)
Clothlike photovolatics. You'd be quite literally wearing a patch of solar cells on your jacket, powering your appliances. Self-charging power cells, when it runs low, it'll tell you through audibles or a simple electroluminescent indicator. Just set it outside and it'll happily charge itself.
New processes for PV's to be built. Self-charging billboards using LED's or other low voltage lighting, eliminating high powered spots that pollute the night sky. I don't know how they would stand up to the rigors of space travel, but I'll bet they'll come up with something, perhaps laminating BB PV's in Lexan or a similiar transparent material.
Maybe a paint using them, making once again, self powered equipment, or hybrid wind generators that keep generating power even when the wind is calm!
How are they at being a wearing face? New generations of bearing materials that have an even lower friction coefficient than the current materials.
Also, new formulations for fuel using polymer chains of BB's maybe in order, making it an excellent replacement for sulfur as a lubricating additive.
Re:Why Bucky-wires and not Bucky-snot? (Score:1, Interesting)
If you read the actual article, the evidence suggests that the fullerenes are slowly polymerizing, and crosslinking - an NMR spectrum after several months implies that it actually is one, big, horrible mess (or not fullerenes anymore, depending on how skeptical you are of this).
Yeah that bugged me too. It's pretty common knowledge in the fullerene chemistry community that if you leave a fullerene sample in a solvent for long enough, it will break down/polymerize/what-have-you. The article is pretty heavily padded, if you ask me. They essentially pulled a year-old sample out of the drawer, couldn't get it to dissolve, and did some work to indicate that the stuff had polymerized. That in and of itself is pretty interesting, but 'metal-free?' Gimme a break. Most industrial scale-ups aren't looking for a synthesis that takes 11.5 months, and if you want it to go any faster, you're probably looking at introducing a catalyst at some point. So much for metal-free. Also, just a pet peeve of mine, but I really hate when chemists pad their articles with a whole bunch of theory when all they really did was stick their input file into Gaussian and wait around for an answer to pop out.