They have now managed to produce
an aerogel out of carbon nanotubes which likely takes the resultant material
close to the real limits for such materials.
None of this was even imagined
not so long ago.
We are seeing a wide range of new
possibilities emerge and most today are wonderful solution looking for problems
to solve. Something needs to get the
application work started. Perhaps we can
use this to support structural work in a large airship. It certainly looks able to provide core
strength for stress skin structures. An
air ship skin composed of two monofilaments sandwiching an aerogel and well
bonded is likely to be increditably strong and resilient.
At present this is a lab
curiosity. Let us hope we see it elsewhere.
World's lightest solid material, known as 'frozen smoke', gets even
lighter
By Grant Banks
22:48 January 13, 2011
Frozen smoke is the world's lightest solid material
Researchers have created a new aerogel that boasts amazing strength and
an incredibly large surface area. Nicknamed ‘frozen smoke’ due to its
translucent appearance, aerogels are manufactured materials derived from a gel
in which the liquid component of the gel has been replaced with a gas,
resulting in a material renowned as the world’s lightest solid material. The
new so-called “multiwalled carbon nanotube (MCNT) aerogel” could be used in
sensors to detect pollutants and toxic substances, chemical reactors, and
electronics components.
Although aerogels have been fabricated from silica, metal oxides,
polymers, and carbon-based materials and are already used in thermal insulation
in windows and buildings, tennis racquets, sponges to clean up oil spills, and
other products, few scientists have succeeded in making aerogels from carbon
nanotubes.
The researchers were able to succeed where so many before them had
failed using a wet gel of well-dispersed pristine MWCNTs. After removing the
liquid component from the MWCNT wet gel, they were able to create the lightest
ever free-standing MWCNT aerogel monolith with a density of 4 mg/cm3.
MWCNT aerogels infused with a plastic material are flexible, like a
spring that can be stretched thousands of times, and if the nanotubes in a
one-ounce cube were unraveled and placed side-to-side and end-to-end, they
would carpet three football fields. The MWCNT aerogels are also excellent
conductors of electricity, which is what makes them ideal for sensing
applications and offers great potential for their use in electronics components.
A report describing the process for making MWCNT aerogels and tests to
determine their properties appears in ACS Nano.
2 comments:
Can you spray form objects? I know this is a very vague question, But I just want to know if you could spray form an object 46" X 10" X >.5" (LWH). 230 cubic inches of spray form carbon nano tubes in roughly those dimensions. Whats the $$ ching ching $$ on that? Would you require a substrate of sorts?
I just want to know if you can spray form objects. I want to create an object 47" x 10" X <.5". That's what, 235 cubic inches of spray form carbon nano tubes. That should weigh about 940mgs by your claim perhaps even less. I'm very curious about this stuff. I have other ideas and questions.
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