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Technology Science

New Technique for Creating Nanotube Sheets 147

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the very-small-news-desk dept.
Quetzalcoatl writes "A team of researchers has come up with a way to make strong, stable sheets of multiwall nanotubes at a rate of seven meters per minute. These sheets already display a number of remarkable qualities that lend them to many different applications, including artificial muscles, transparent antennas, video displays and solar cells."
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New Technique for Creating Nanotube Sheets More

New Technique for Creating Nanotube Sheets

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  • Dupe (Score:4, Informative)

    by onekanobe ( 908898 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @04:37AM (#13365615)
    Dupe. [slashdot.org]

  • nanotubes? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by qurk ( 87195 )
    You mean this is a strong, thin, substance? Why couldn't we put a layer of this on the space shuttle to be pulled off after in orbit, to protect the hundreds of tiles that enable her to reenter the atmosphere. Why can't we put a bunch of two by fours between the shuttle and the external tank holding a screen of these to make sure that foam falling off doesn't hit the shuttle.... Why can't we just wrap the external tank in this to make sure foam doesn't fall off and hit the shuttle. I got shut down sugge

    • Re:nanotubes? (Score:5, Informative)

      by jurt1235 ( 834677 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @06:38AM (#13365847) Homepage
      The problem with the foam is that Nasa loves to leave the shuttle outside for days with an unstable foam (suspectable from sun hardening/creating cracks, soaking up moisture from the atmosphere which then freezes, widening the cracks). The temperature difference between outside and inside of the foam can reach about 100Kelvin. If they would shield it from the sun, do not drive it out to early and keep it nicely aircoed and conditioned, the foam will probably stay better. If really good aircoed, or with more accurate launch windows, the foam might not bee needed at all.

      Adding a protective net around the just described properties of the foam, will makes you run the risk that the foam will really behave bad. The foam could instead of fail in pieces fail as a whole, causing this ultra strong net to fly around in un unpredictable way.
      Adding the net not around the foam but instead around the shuttle will take care that shuttle arrives in one piece in space. The material however is not heat proof. It will fail under high temperature, actually the outside of the space shuttle is a "controlled" failure, in which after several flights certain parts are replaced. If your net fails on the way back, the shuttle can still loose the vital tiles and not land in one part.

      Your idea is not a bad one, and does not need a superhightech foam perse. Just a flexible PE layer could do the trick. The tank will never gets really hot (it is dumped before that happens, and then burns itself on the way down, nobody cares about that part of the trip). Maybe adding a second wiring in the foam itself with some fiber will help too, it will be more complex though.

      Last but not least: this problem is a problem invented by Nasa. The foam would not or be less necessary if Nasa used a different fuel (kerosine like the Russians), or would keep the shuttle in a lower surrounding temperature condition.
      • I'm sure that it takes a while for the machine to move from the staging area to the physical pad, then you need to load the fuel, which takes a while to say the least.

        http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/facilities/tour.html [nasa.gov]

        And

        http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/facilities/crawler.htm l [nasa.gov]
        • So that is why one of the suggestions is to change the situation in which the shuttle stays prelaunch. In other words: change the staging area into the physical path. So instead of moving the shuttle around in a complex way, move the walls away in another complext way.

      • Re:nanotubes? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Rei ( 128717 )
        Score 5? Oh, give me a break!

        The problem with the foam is that Nasa loves to leave the shuttle outside for days with an unstable foam (suspectable from sun hardening/creating cracks, soaking up moisture from the atmosphere which then freezes, widening the cracks).

        There have been no studies that indicate that the few days that the main tank spends outside the vehicle assembly building have any effect at all on the foam's stability. Quite to the contrary, the evidence suggests that it's the method of applica
        • Score 5: Well, I do not do my own moderation

          Anyway: As you point out yourself too luckily: It is the design (irregular shape etc) which increases temperature problems and with that ice formation.
          With LOX/LH2 rockets there is a very simple solution in use against ice: Just launch the rocket, the ice falls of at launch, and since there is almost nothing it can fatally hit on the way down, or which will be used again, it is not an issue.

          Ablative properties: Sorry, I was thinking the wrong way around in the

  • Just remember... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by skyman8081 ( 681052 ) <skyman8081NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday August 21, 2005 @04:39AM (#13365629) Homepage

    No Flash Photography of the nanotubes please. [physicsweb.org]

    They will explode.

  • New material for Brisith soldiers underwear? (Score:4, Funny)

    by frinkacheese ( 790787 ) * on Sunday August 21, 2005 @04:42AM (#13365638) Journal
    Now our soldiers can have shortages of nanotube underwear [slashdot.org] - yay! Nanotube condoms anybody?

  • And Sarah Mclachlan sings! (Score:5, Funny)

    by bmo ( 77928 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @04:47AM (#13365648)
    "The server's on fire!
    It's more than I can handle"

    Jeez...there's what.. (looks at file size) a 6.7MB video of this?

    And it's a dupe!

    Bravo! I genuflect in the direction of Slashdot, honoring its unlimited power to bring fear and loathing into the hearts of system administrators everywhere!

    --
    BMO ++ ATH0 NO CARRIER

    I don't care. My Karma Is Bigger Than Yours
  • This has been covered on /. a lot, but nonetheless, I still want to see these artificial materials given 'smart' qualities. Like the example I gave previously, such as superconducting cords that detangle themselves and melt down and allow you to pour it through where you want it and it reforms itself.

    Even if that doesn't happen, I wouldn't be suprised if we get our first superconductors from methods like this.
  • I am so using that to tape my hockey stick...
    • "I am so using that to tape my hockey stick..."

      The NHL will ban it, in favor of laminated nanotube pucks and more steroids. That is assuming that we actually have a season this year.

      --
      BMO 'What are you doing?' 'We're putting on the foil' - Slapshot

  • Suggestion for the editors (Score:3, Insightful)

    by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @05:00AM (#13365673) Journal
    Time to put tags on stories and search that in addition to links (there have been numerous dupes with same links). If the tags are on, then pull up all the past stories starting with the most recent. This is not a hard thing to do.

  • Made in USA (Score:1, Insightful)

    by BIGBOOGA ( 909106 )
    Great that this innovation is made in USA. Although we have our problems, we are still capable of making ground-breaking discoveries.

    I don't understand potential applications, but if the physicists/material-sci people are saying it is great, I guess it is really great.

    Somehow, though, I fear it will get commercialized first in Japan, and then rapidly the Chinese will be making money off the stuff.
    • But with patents Americans will get the profits of it, thus closing a small part of the trade deficit.
      Sometimes slogans about innovation and creativity do work out, however in the long run, the outsourcing campaign will need a new slogan.

  • record (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 21, 2005 @05:09AM (#13365692)
    46 hours and 34 minutes, surely this has got to be getting close to a duping [slashdot.org] record
  • when they have it in 2 ply, 1000 sheet rolls that fit on my toilet paper spool, then maybe i'll be interested.

  • Burnin' Karma (Score:5, Funny)

    by Frodo Crockett ( 861942 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @05:30AM (#13365732)
    Blackmailing sysadmin with threat of slashdotting - $10,000
    Posting the article twice after he pays up - Priceless

  • Scientists at Blistering Pace! (Score:4, Funny)

    by lo0ol ( 799434 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @05:41AM (#13365764) Homepage
    It's amazing what science is doing nowadays. First we're applauding the efforts of one group's efforts to create a new technique to make nanotube sheets, and only a few days later a NEW technique comes by! Fantastic!
    • "I was watching the Superbowl with my 92 year old grandfather. The team scored a touchdown. They showed the instant replay. He thought they scored another one. I was gonna tell him, but I figured the game he was watching was better."

      --Steven Wright

  • Dear ScuttleMonkey! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Inoshiro ( 71693 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @06:22AM (#13365821) Homepage
    I appreciate your effort to oust CmdrTaco as the #1 dupe poster, but this simple first-step [slashdot.org] is but a small part of a journey. CmdrTaco has done this for far longer than you.

    He has also duped himself [slashdot.org] more than once, something you'll have to master before dethroning him.
  • 2 new methods in as many days? We can't be far from a space elevator now!

  • I can see that already (Score:3, Funny)

    by Janek Kozicki ( 722688 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @06:48AM (#13365867) Journal
    And next dupe about that will come from piquepille. I can see that already:

    "Are you amazed at how nanotubes _are_ produced? See _brief_ article for more details".

  • Breakthrough discovery! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Alsee ( 515537 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @07:12AM (#13365909) Homepage
    Slashdot invents new way to duplicate nanotubes!

    -

  • Enough already! I want my ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by KlaymenDK ( 713149 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @07:48AM (#13365959) Journal
    ... monofilament "splendid cheese cutter"[1].

    And please refrain from modding me Funny. I am in fact serious: All this nano-research is fine and dandy, but it really doesn't _do_ much for us until actual products emerges on the consumer market. "us" being you and me, as opposed to science and nano-technology research(ers).

    In all sincerety, it would be great to see infinitely sharp and durable cheese cutters, or full-body workclothes that are strong and light, or, for that matter, that fabled space elevator. We are, after all, living in the (also-fabled) 21st century.

    ______
    [1] Arthur C. Clarke, "Foundations of Paradise" p.53 (ISBN 0446677949)
    • ... it would be great to see infinitely sharp and durable cheese cutters...

      I hear you. As it stands you have to buy a new one every three or four garottings, and for some reason you get funny looks when you ask to buy in bulk...
    • The name of the material you are looking for is "thin edge". It comes from an Analog story of the same name published, I believe, in the 1970s.
    • Well most cutting implements aren't as sharp as they could be, even with current technology (ceramic, diamond cutting edges).

      Why:

      Cutting yourself would become realy dangerous, as it wouldn't just be a skin deep cut, but would just slice your fingers right off. Imagine something like a papercut, but with a material much sharper, more effective, capable of cutting bone.

      This is the reason why a cheese cutter is much more blunt as a razor blade, and razorblades themselves aren't sharper themselves.
      • Alright, I hadn't considered the seriousness of 'incidental paper cuts'. Nor the fact that razor blades are duller than they could be (ref.: Raven's blade in Snow Crash).

        Still, we do have sharp 'weapons' in household appliances, and I would make a case that such things are quite safe if regarded and treated as such. (But then, I live in a country where you (probably) can't sue for the consequence of lack of common sense.)

        Maybe it just all comes down to it being a Money Issue. Not in the sense of nifty carbo
  • Anyone still remembers Scotty talking about transparaent aluminium? This seems to be very close...
  • I saw this and it made me reminisce about Bill Joy's essay http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html [wired.com]
    "Why The Future Doesn't Need Us." This is the kind of tech that makes me think the future might not only not need us but might want to tidily get us out of the way while it's at it.

    This is cool stuff but every instance of this stuff should be registered like a lethal weapon and accounted for and contained in class-4 biocontainment before we figure out how we can learn how to safely get rid of this stuf

  • System Wide Web (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @11:09AM (#13366434) Homepage Journal
    Is the softball-sized device in the video really the entire manufacturing "factory"? What's the feedstock, and how is power supplied?

    Imagine a gang of ribbon robots (ribbots?) in Solar orbit, each with a tank of feedstock. They roll their ribbons out from a central equipment cluster towards a circumference 10Km away. The whole rig is spinning, the "centrifugal force" keeping the ribbons straight towards the circular rim. Pairs of magnetically linked ribbots literally weave ribbons around the ribbon spokes, just like spiders weaving their webs, welding paths around the center to the spokes. Now there's a 300Km^2 circle, weighing 10tons collecting 4TW of uninterrupted solar energy.

    Even if this film is only a little better at photoelectrics than current PVs, that's over 1TW, the entire US electrical consumption. Put two up there, mount a soviet-style maser array (98% efficiency) pointed at a relay platform floating out in the Pacific. We can recycle all our power plants, coal mines, and petroleum "allies" into national parks or shopping malls (I know which one I'd convert the nuke plants to).

    If we float the "PowerWeb" in Solar orbit closer to the Sun, we don't even need as large an area: halfway to the Sun gets 4x the power, over 5KW:m^2. OTOH, since the material is so strong, light (and maybe cheap), we can make them really big, without worrying too much about shear and ripple forces tearing the web. If we put a couple dozen of them floating around the Solar System, maybe in some concentric rings vertical to the ecliptic, we could install a power grid for exploration and colonization of our entire Solar System. A "light rail" capturing Solar energy, and beaming it against a fleet of solar sails, shuttling crews and cargo around. All at the speed of the original Age of Sail, except a few weeks could get us around from Earth thru Neptune - mere days for unmanned craft at >1G.

    And this is just the first generation of the tech. Both the material and the factory will get smaller, lighter, cheaper, better. I just hope the American vision of scientific exploration proves worthy of the promise of this stuff. Because I'd hate to switch paying my power bills from Saudi Oil to Chinese Electric.

    • fire phasers (Score:3, Interesting)

      by handy_vandal ( 606174 )
      Even if this film is only a little better at photoelectrics than current PVs, that's over 1TW, the entire US electrical consumption. Put two up there, mount a soviet-style maser array (98% efficiency) pointed at a relay platform floating out in the Pacific.

      I admire your vision. But I'm afraid that orbital maser arrays will more likely be pointed at Riyadh ... or Beijing ... or wherever ....

      -kgj
      • Me too. That's why I bitched on Slashdot recently about the US throwing away our commanding political, economic, technical and diplomatic advantages. Because if we'd spent the late 1990s and early 2000s producing a "Space Nonproliferation" treaty with eyes and teeth, we would have perpetuated our domination of the world to other worlds, through other centuries. Now, all it takes is Pakistan to redirect their nuclear missile program into nuclear-powered moon rockets, establish a base, and build some nuke pow

    • Yes, but in addition to converting 1TW to electricity, it is converting 3TW to heat. Imagine the heat pipe properties of the material conducting all that straight to the core. Actually, what you would expect would be for the system to be isothermal. In the vacuum of space (no conduction or convection losses), however, the only way to get rid of that much heat is to get very hot and radiate it. Fortunately, radiation increases with the fourth power of temperature and the back side of the array can be poi

      • Once we start talking seriously about engineering solar plants, it quickly becomes obvious that 1KW:m^2 at 1AU is a lot of power. This material is very strong, with a very high surface:volume. I expect that nanotubes tagged with a semiconducting Si group, or doped for semiconducting spiral pitch at one ened, or otherwise made PV, will be about as cheap and easy as the current process. Especially once the current prototype gets through some manufacturing generations. Meanwhile the nanotube "conditioning" pro

        • Even with 100% efficient power transmission, the space station you described is capable of powering new york city, not the US. 10,000m^2 * pi * 1000W/m^2 * 20/100 (efficiency) = 62GW. This is much lower than your projected yield of 1TW. So, now we are looking at a much smaller dent in the US energy budget. You are taking about a solar cell area of 314Mm^2 (typo: 300Km^2 is 300K square meters, not 300K square kilometers). There are about 100 million households in the US. So, you can take the sam

          • Well, Solar power is 1300W:m^2 at 1AU (our atmosphere reduces that to 1KW:m^2 at Solar Noon at sealevel). So a 10Km radius solar collector gets 0.408TW [google.com]. At 20% efficiency (the article claims it would be higher), that's 82GW. So make it 35Km radius - this stuff is strong. It then weighs 35tons, which costs under $245M to launch, assuming we don't instead launch a siphon system at a gas giant for the needed CNO atoms, investing in the resulting energy bounty and space transport infrastructure.

            As for NYC, cove
    • Cheap space power is a myth. The fact is that even if the solar cell material was free (all issues of a space ballet of weaving robots (for no particular reason when you can just epoxy or microwave weld the strips) aside), the launch costs of the source mass would easily kill such a plan. Even if there was no maintenance (which there certainly would be), capital cost amortization would make earth-based solar power look like a bargain. Remember: all issues of "robot construction", cheap launch costs are 7

      • Re:System Wide Web (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Doc Ruby ( 173196 )
        Well, maybe Grumman conned me and the Planetary Society in 1990. They had absorbed a fleet of the Soviet astrophysicists working on Energia, their Solar space platform. Their presentation to the PS, with the Arthur P. Little engineering firm, included Soviet tech they claimed was a 98% efficient maser for transmitting the generated power from space to Earth. None of the Columbia astrophysicists, or their guests from Boston and Pasadena, seemed to think that was BS.

        Now, that $7K:Kg figure is what I've heard,
        • Here's a cite [www.isr.us]. Edwards is hardly an idiot, and has researched very extensively on the subject. I'll sum up the two methods:

          Laser: without adaptive optics, the concept is all but dead in the water. Adaptive gives the needed focus over the critical range. The best currently available high power laser has an efficiency of 3%. The best cells to go with that laser are 59% efficiency, 82% filled at that frequency.

          Microwave: 2.4, 35, and 94 GHz were considered in multiple separate studies, with different kind
    • What you've described as a solar generator is actually a solar sail. Why you don't put it together, I can't understand, because you even expound on the benefits of a solar sail later in the article. How will you keep the solar sail from blowing in the wind?

      There's lots of evidence that global warming and cooling is determined more by Sun activity than anything happening on Earth. Today, you only dump and extra TW of energy into our atmosphere. But then energy gets so cheap that no one will see a reason
      • The Solar "sail" tacks against the wind by orbiting the Sun at a smaller radius than the Earth's, but slower. Ordinarily that orbit would decay into the Sun, but it's balance against the push of the wind. There are orbits which maintain geosync. There are also a lot of other details to work out, but which have solutions.

        Of course Earth warming is, at root, mostly governed by the Sun's insolation. But the vast preponderance of the evidence, which has produced the overwhelming scientific consensus, is that hu
    • Moderation +1
          30% Interesting
          40% Offtopic
          30% Insightful

      TrollMods say my post about applying the nanotube sheets, that the article describes, to solar power/sails in space, is "Offtopic". That's not even a stupid way to unaccountably contradict my post. It's just a bunch of weaselly Slashstalkers [slashdot.org].

  • Read before you jump to conclusions (Score:3, Informative)

    by llamaxing ( 895844 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @11:47AM (#13366559) Homepage
    You guys just love jumping to conclusions, don't ya? I bet even after I post this, there will still be comments about "duping" to follow. You see, off the bat ya gotta realize that this article says multiwalled nanotubes -- usually it's just "carbon nanotube sheets", giving the idea it's two-sided like a sheet of aluminum foil. Moreover, it doesn't say they created the strongest nanotubes, but rather a new and faster way of developing them.
  • ...to post some cool links. Here's Nature's Quicktime video of the sheets being produced (coral cache).

    http://www.nature.com.nyud.net:8090/news/2005/0508 15/full/050815-8.html [nyud.net]

    And the official press release from UT Dallas...

    http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-08/uot a-utd081505.php [eurekalert.org]

  • Nanize Me! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @12:10PM (#13366637) Homepage Journal
    These sheets have about 14T nanotubes per m^2, or lines of 4M tubes per meter - thats a 250nm "process" of nanotubes. If each tube can be made a pixel (maybe tagging it with an organic group, for OLED), that's 100K dpi. And likely not on a perfect rectangular "grid" like today's 25dpi LCD monitors, but rather in an "organic" texture like the surfaces of actual objects we see. 10Gpixels per square inch - where are my VR contact lenses?

  • My gut says no... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mark-t ( 151149 ) <markt.nerdflat@com> on Sunday August 21, 2005 @12:22PM (#13366678) Journal
    Something tells me this is a hoax. Call me a sceptic.

    Maybe a premature announcement to get additional funding for a project that's still decades away from seeing results, I dunno... but something about this just screams "cold fusion" to me, and I don't think we'll ever see it.

  • I have a feeling that nanotube cuts will be dramatic compared to good old paper cuts.

    ---
    Nano nano
            Mork
  • I can understand the editors' decision to dupe stories based on the fact that many people may have missed them first time around. But perhaps a better idea would be for people to rate the importance of a story, and then have the story to float around the top for longer if it's important enough.

    Based on this same idea, people can filter out stories which are above a certain threshold of importance.

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