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| Science & Technology |
| Buckypaper Armor |
| 2008-10-19 |
| It's called "buckypaper" and looks a lot like ordinary carbon paper, but don't be fooled by the cute name or flimsy appearance. It could revolutionize the way everything from airplanes to TVs are made. Buckypaper is 10 times lighter but potentially 500 times stronger than steel when sheets of it are stacked and pressed together to form a composite. Unlike conventional composite materials, though, it conducts electricity like copper or silicon and disperses heat like steel or brass. "All those things are what a lot of people in nanotechnology have been working toward as sort of Holy Grails," said Wade Adams, a scientist at Rice University. That idea — that there is great future promise for buckypaper and other derivatives of the ultra-tiny cylinders known as carbon nanotubes — has been floated for years now. However, researchers at Florida State University say they have made important progress that may soon turn hype into reality. Buckypaper is made from tube-shaped carbon molecules 50,000 times thinner than a human hair. Due to its unique properties, it is envisioned as a wondrous new material for light, energy-efficient aircraft and automobiles, more powerful computers, improved TV screens and many other products. So far, buckypaper can be made at only a fraction of its potential strength, in small quantities and at a high price. The Florida State researchers are developing manufacturing techniques that soon may make it competitive with the best composite materials now available. "If this thing goes into production, this very well could be a very, very game-changing or revolutionary technology to the aerospace business," said Les Kramer, chief technologist for Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, which is helping fund the Florida State research. So far, the Florida State institute has been able to produce buckypaper with half the strength of the best existing composite material, known as IM7 graphite. "By the end of next year we should have a buckypaper composite as strong as IM7, and it's 35 percent lighter." The military also is looking at it for use in armor plating and stealth technology. "Our plan is perhaps in the next 12 months we'll begin maybe to have some commercial products," Wang said. "Nanotubes obviously are no longer just lab wonders. They have real world potential. It's real." |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #2 The problem with geodesic domes is that, generally speaking, the technology stopped there. What was needed was instead of imagining the domes as things in themselves, to have them as just a starting point, like any other building. For instance, the outside could be designed for water collection and distillation, solar power and water pre-heating, algae biodiesel generation, light inclusion and exclusion, insulation and heat exchange, as a complex antenna, etc. The inside could be just as complicated, using upper portions of the dome as a heat trapping small hydroponic greenhouse, along with mycoprotein (fungus) vats, with excess CO2 cycled up there to stimulate growth further. The external solar panels could power electrolysis to produce both hydrogen fuel and oxygen as a purifying bleach-oxidizer. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2008-10-19 20:08 |
| #1 I love this stuff. By "stuff" I mean newly found applications of older inventions... Years and years ago [60s] I helped build a geodesic dome [Buckminster Fuller] up in the Caliphornia Mountains. [yes, I waz chasing Lovely Hippie Skirt, the Hippies all had long hair,... Me--> High and Tight! . |
| Posted by: RD 2008-10-19 19:09 |