World's longest carbon nanotube with 276 times steel‘s tensile strength

[cirr]

made in China

17/07/2013

Science and Technology Daily News

Sorry about the poor translation。

Climbing "ladder" to reach stars, landing on the moon in an "elevator", these sci-fi scene, will likely become a reality. Recently, the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission, supported by Tsinghua University Professor Wei Fei team successfully prepared single nanotube length of more than half a meter, creating a new world record, which is currently all the length of the one-dimensional nanomaterials highest value. Related Content recently published online in the internationally renowned journal "American Chemical Society Nano" on.

Carbon nanotubes are ever found one of the best mechanical properties of the material, the quality of their units on the tensile strength of steel 276 times, far more than other materials. "Scientific American" magazine has made "between the Earth and the moon to build a ladder" seductive dream, but over such a long distance without being pulled off its own weight of the material, only carbon nanotubes, and is batch preparation, with a macroscopic length, theoretical mechanical properties, a single length of meters or even kilometers grade level and above.

the growth of carbon nanotubes, the high-temperature growth process the catalyst is an irreversible deactivation of the law, thus limiting the length of carbon nanotubes; And, as catalyst deactivation, long carbon nanotube density would drop dramatically. Therefore, to improve the catalyst activity as much as possible to further increase the probability of carbon nanotube length is the only way. The team is fully prepared materials and chemical technologies interdisciplinary advantages in manufacturing equipment, a lot of aspects of preparation process improvement and innovation, the first time the growth of carbon nanotubes per millimeter length of the catalytic activity of the probability increased to 99.5%, the ultimate success of the prepared single length of more than half a meter of carbon nanotubes.

Wei Fei said: "We are prepared carbon nanotubes have perfect structure, excellent mechanical properties and macroscopic length, we are currently engaged in more than 1 meter Carbon Nanotubes, the next step would like to prepare a kilometer stage These macroscopic length and has a density of carbon nanotubes. These efforts will provide space 'ladder' Preparation open glimmer. "(Reporter stated)

Original report in Chinese：????*??276--?--

 

[cirr]

This is what I call the leading edge of future high tech，not some mundane smartphones or CPUs that any third world country can make。

Growth of Half-Meter Long Carbon Nanotubes Based on Schulz–Flory Distribution

By Fei Wei et al。

Published June 27,2013

The Schulz–Flory distribution is a mathematical function that describes the relative ratios of polymers of different length after a polymerization process, based on their relative probabilities of occurrence. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are big carbon molecules which have a very high length-to-diameter ratio, somewhat similar to polymer molecules. Large amounts of ultralong CNTs have not been obtained although they are highly desired. Here, we report that the Schulz–Flory distribution can be applied to describe the relative ratios of CNTs of different lengths produced with a floating chemical vapor deposition process, based on catalyst activity/deactivation probability. With the optimized processing parameters, we successfully synthesized 550-mm-long CNTs, for which the catalyst deactivation probability of a single growth step was ultralow. Our finding bridges the Schulz–Flory distribution and the synthesis of one-dimensional nanomaterials for the first time, and sheds new light on the rational design of process toward controlled production of nanotubes/nanowires.

Growth of Half-Meter Long Carbon Nanotubes Based on Schulz