Light and thin as tissue but stronger than steel

[Kay]

This is one to keep track of! A fascinating invention from Florida.


Buckypaper is made of tube-shaped carbon molecules that are 50,000 times thinner than a human hair, but with the potential to be 500 times stronger than steel.

You need a massive electron microscope to see the ultra-tiny cylinders known as carbon nanotubes.

The material has been a lab wonder for the past 20 years, but no one knew how to use its unique properties in commercial production. Now researchers at Florida State University’s High-Performance Materials Institute are solving that puzzle.

They are starting a company to pave the way for commercial uses of Buckypaper. In addition to its heavy-duty strength, Buckypaper conducts electricity very effectively and that makes it a great shield against lightning for airplanes.

Read article in full here. (http://www.panhandleparade.com/index.php/mbb/article/florida_invention_could_revolutionize_some_product s/mbb7711085/)

The potential applications for a product like this must be enormous. I think Buckypaper would be well worth putting on your Google Alerts list if you use it. Maybe we'll get flying cars after all, given the lightness of it.

[Fergal]

It sounds like an amazing invention indeed. I'm sure that it will have many applications in security, construction and medical industries. It doesn't mention anything in the article about how expensive it is to produce.

[entreator]

Obviously when there is demand and competition in the market the price of manufacturing will reduce automatically.Maybe it'll take time but it'll surely take place when the awareness about its qualities and uses is widespread.This stuff can make our building taller and safer.This is something thats seriously is going to effect a lot of industries .

[Kay]

I hadn't even thought about construction but it would be fantastic for that. Especially when so many places need to be able to withstand earthquakes, tornados and such like. Given that it's less bulky and much lighter, I was thinking too that even the shipping/transportation costs alone of the product itself and any end product would be far lower than for its steel equivalent.

I found a website called http://www.buckypaper.com/. I don't know if it's some enterprising person that registered it when the 2005 pr came out or anyone on the project, but this is particularly interesting:


As one of the most thermally conductive materials known, buckypaper lends itself to the development of heat sinks that would allow computers and other electronic equipment to disperse heat more efficiently than is currently possible. This, in turn, could lead to even greater advances in electronic miniaturization.

How much smaller things can get we may be about to find out. :)

[Nazreen]

I think that this would have a lot of military applications and it also said in buckypaper website that the U.S. military has shown interest on this. I wonder what were the developments so far in military applications since 2005. I would think that they would have built body armors for US soldiers by now or is it too expensive?

[pendelton]

Probably too expensive for common use still. Some of the technologies seem to take for ever to come done in price to be worthwhile. Which is odd to say considering it could be a person's life weighed against cost, but, if a person were it is killed and stripped of his/her armor and the enemy gets it. Well, you can see the issue there.
Testing phases can seem to last years, plus there could also have been unforeseen difficulties that are slowing down things.

[scifi]

I think it must be based on concept of carbon fibres?????
what u have to say!!!

[youbetcha1018]

Sounds great! What a cool invention. But I believe that will be very expensive for common use.

[Fergal]

Perhaps it will be like a lot of new technologies, very expensive when it is first released. But the price often comes down over time.