Carbon nanotubes are the lab stars of nanotechnology. They can conduct electricity better than copper. They can behave like a metal – or a semiconductor. They can be 10 times stronger than steel. They can be controlled by heat or by magnetism. As coated tubes, they can contain medicine. In short, they’re extremely versatile, which means they have the potential for almost limitless applications. Except…they’re not easy to manufacture in quantity and not easy to process into commercially usable forms. Tackling the latter problem, a nine year research program conducted by Rice University (Texas, USA) and other institutions has led to methods for dissolving nanotubes and processing them like polymer (plastic) fluids.
“Plastics is a $300 billion U.S. industry because of the massive throughput that’s possible with fluid processing,” said Rice’s Matteo Pasquali, a paper co-author and professor in chemical and biomolecular engineering and in chemistry. “The reason grocery stores use plastic bags instead of paper and the reason polyester shirts are cheaper than cotton is that polymers can be melted or dissolved and processed as fluids by the train-car load. Processing nanotubes as fluids opens up all of the fluid-processing technology that has been developed for polymers.”
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“The current research shows that we have a true solvent for nanotubes — chlorosulfonic acid — which is what we set out to find when we started this project nine years ago.”
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But a final breakthrough remains before the true potential of high-quality carbon nanotubes can be realized. That’s because HiPco and all other methods of making high-end, “single-walled” nanotubes generate a hodgepodge of nanotubes with different diameters, lengths and molecular structures. Scientists worldwide are scrambling to find a process that will generate just one kind of nanotube in bulk, like the best-conducting metallic varieties, for instance.“One good thing about the process that we have right now is that if anybody could give us one gram of pure metallic nanotubes, we could give them one gram of fiber within a few days,” Pasquali said.
[Source: Nanotechnology Today]
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Nanotechnical science is forging a new consciousness with potential for challenging the existing physics with innovations displaying the versatility of strong, conductive, magnetically responsive carbon nanotubes. This progress depends on the data density of atomic topological modeling for analysis of the nano/picoscale quantum effects and relativistic factors which regulate electron flow and heat management. Recent advancements in quantum science have produced the picoyoctometric, 3D, interactive video atomic model imaging function, in terms of chronons and spacons for exact, quantized, relativistic animation. This format returns clear numerical data for a full spectrum of variables. The atom’s RQT (relative quantum topological) data point imaging function is built by combination of the relativistic Einstein-Lorenz transform functions for time, mass, and energy with the workon quantized electromagnetic wave equations for frequency and wavelength.
The atom labeled psi (Z) pulsates at the frequency {Nhu=e/h} by cycles of {e=m(c^2)} transformation of nuclear surface mass to forcons with joule values, followed by nuclear force absorption. This radiation process is limited only by spacetime boundaries of {Gravity-Time}, where gravity is the force binding space to psi, forming the GT integral atomic wavefunction. The expression is defined as the series expansion differential of nuclear output rates with quantum symmetry numbers assigned along the progression to give topology to the solutions.
Next, the correlation function for the manifold of internal heat capacity energy particle 3D functions is extracted by rearranging the total internal momentum function to the photon gain rule and integrating it for GT limits. This produces a series of 26 topological waveparticle functions of the five classes; {+Positron, Workon, Thermon, -Electromagneton, Magnemedon}, each the 3D data image of a type of energy intermedon of the 5/2 kT J internal energy cloud, accounting for all of them.
Those 26 energy data values intersect the sizes of the fundamental physical constants: h, h-bar, delta, nuclear magneton, beta magneton, k (series). They quantize atomic dynamics by acting as fulcrum particles. The result is the exact picoyoctometric, 3D, interactive video atomic model data point imaging function, responsive to keyboard input of virtual photon gain events by relativistic, quantized shifts of electron, force, and energy field states and positions.
Images of the h-bar magnetic energy waveparticle of ~175 picoyoctometers are available online at http://www.symmecon.com with the complete RQT atomic modeling manual titled The Crystalon Door, copyright TXu1-266-788. TCD conforms to the unopposed motion of disclosure in U.S. District (NM) Court of 04/02/2001 titled The Solution to the Equation of Schrodinger.