[News] Producing carbon nanotubes on an industrial scale

[Moontanman]

Producing carbon nanotubes on an industrial scale

 

Carbon nanotubes promise to revolutionize everything from medicine to electronics and power generation. Unfortunately nanotubes are notoriously hard to work with and chemists worldwide have struggled for years to even make them. Now researchers have unveiled a method for the industrial-scale processing of pure carbon nanotube fibers that builds upon the tried-and-true processes that chemical firms have used for decades to produce plastics.

 

Producing carbon nanotubes on an industrial scale

[Moontanman]

This is very interesting, I spent much of my life working in a plant that produced polymerized plastics. Teasing the molecules into alignment from what is for all practical purposes a chunk of brittle plastic that acts more like glass into long chains of super flexible molecules 1000's of times stronger then they were originally is a pretty cool process even after doing it for 25 years. Making long carbon nano tubes would be a very interesting endeavor even if you just ran the process.