“Because this thread is diamond at heart, we expect
that it will prove to be extraordinarily stiff, extraordinarily strong, and
extraordinarily useful”
Chemistry
professor John Badding at Penn State University discussing his team’s synthesis
of Diamond Nanothread
Just when I thought I'd seen every possible use for
Carbon atoms, yet another man-made material pops up.
Researchers at Penn State University led by
Chemistry professor, Dr. John Badding, have developed a material called Diamond
Nanothread as reported in the article “New
'Diamond nanothreads' may make Space elevator a reality”, published
September 26, 2014 by Nick Statt, CNET News.
Their research was published in the Nature
Materials Journal in September 2014, lays out a method by which they
synthesized what may turn out to be the strongest man-made fiber on Earth.
It’s composed of Benzene rings that have reacted
with each other so that the Carbon atoms form into the usual tetrahedral
structure that gives diamond its hardness but in a thread-like structure 20,000
smaller than the human hair.
The properties were predicted by Chemistry
professor, Dr. John Badding, based on previous high-pressure experiments with
Benzene, quote: “It is as if an incredible jeweler has strung together the
smallest possible diamonds into a long miniature necklace. Because this thread
is diamond at heart, we expect that it will prove to be extraordinarily stiff,
extraordinarily strong, and extraordinarily useful.”
This means that this material extraordinarily stiff
and strong like diamond at the nanoscopic level. If 20,000 such Diamond
Nanothread fibers were braided together to make a strand as thick as a human
hair, it would be a very strong material, possibly capable of lifting hundreds
of pounds before breaking.
Dr.
John Badding’s Diamond Nanothread – Badda’ dan Carbyne Fiber or CNT infused
Spider Silk
This material sounds a lot like the theoretical Carbyne
Fiber material made from carbyne molecules by graduate student Mingjie Liu and
postdoctoral student Vasilii Artyukhov from Rice University as described in my blog article
entitled “Researchers
at Rice University investigate the Mechanical Properties of Carbyne Fibers -
The Ultimate Spongebob Squarepants Superconducting USB 4.0 Cables that’ll
replace Fiber Optic Thunderbolt”.
But unlike their Carbyne based polymer, this polymer
is made from the high-pressure polymerization of Benzene molecules is
apparently much stronger.
In fact it may even be stronger than Carbon
Nanotubes infused into spider silk based on the work of Dr. Emiliano Lepore and
his team at the University of Trento in Trento, Italy as reported in my blog article
entitled “University
of Trento feeds Pholcidae spiders with Carbon nanotubes and graphene – Spider
Silk Stronger than Kevlar suggests different mechanism for Synthetic Silk
Production”.
It may potentially be able to create gigantic
lightweight cables stretching into Outer Space, the so-called Space Elevator
that has been a dream of Science Fiction and Space Scientists to quote Dr. John
Badding: “One of our wildest dreams for the nanomaterials we are developing is
that they could be used to make the super-strong, lightweight cables that would
make possible the construction of a “Space elevator”, which so far has existed
only as a science-fiction idea. From a fundamental-science point of view, our
discovery is intriguing because the threads we formed have a structure that has
never been seen before”.
What's even more surprising is that this material
was produced from benzene, which I've long suspected since my Glenmuir High
School days of being able to undergoes more reactions than just using its
Hydrogen atoms and Pi-Bond Electrons. So how did Dr. John Badding and his team
fabricate this new heir to the strongest materials throne?
Penn
State University’s Carbon Nanothreads – Pi-Bond Polymerization of Benzene is
possible
The Researchers at Penn State University led by
Chemistry professor, Dr. John Badding realized that the Benzene ring structure
is stable thanks to the combination of Sigma Bonds and Pi-Bonds, even though
not all the Valence electrons in the Outer shell of Carbon have been used during
bonding.
In fact, in the Benzene ring, the extra electron
that is not involved in any covalent bond is shared among the other Carbon
atoms via the Pi-Bonds that exist above and below the plane of the Benzene
ring.
Realizing from previous high-pressure experiments
that this suggested that they could polymerize Benzene using those Pi-Bond
electrons, they proceeded to make the Pi-Bonds reactive.
They did this by renting time at the Oak Ridge
National Laboratory to use their Paris-Edinburgh Pressure Cooker, hereby
applying Energy in the form of air pressure to quote Co-author Dr. Malcolm
Guthrie of the Carnegie Institution for Science: “We used the large
high-pressure Paris-Edinburgh device at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to
compress a 6-millimeter-wide amount of benzene – a gigantic amount compared
with previous experiments”.
They placed a 6-millimeter wide pool of benzene into
a Paris-Edinburgh Pressure Cooker at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and applied
a huge amount of pressure at Room Temperature as explained in the article “Ultra-thin
Nanothread Discovery Could Make Diamonds An Astronaut's Best Friend”,
published 9/23/2014 by Brid-Aine Parnell, Forbes.
The added pressure made the electrons in the Pi-Bonds,
which are above and below the plane of the Sigma Bonds that make up the Benzene
ring more reactive, opening up the Pi-Bonds and causing them to become more
reactive.
But because of the added pressure which gave them
more vibrational energy, they could not stay in one place long enough to react.
What they then discovered next had me personally amazed.
How
to make Carbon Nanothreads using Oak Ridge National Laboratory Pressure Cooker
The researchers, realizing that by now the Pi-Bonds
must have broken apart the benzene ring's cohesion, slowly released the
pressure inside of the Paris-Edinburgh Pressure Cooker at Oak Ridge National
Laboratory.
The result is possibly the smallest diamond Necklace
on Earth to quote Co-author Dr. Malcolm Guthrie of the Carnegie Institution for
Science: “We discovered that slowly releasing the pressure after sufficient compression
at normal room temperature gave the carbon atoms the time they needed to react
with each other and to link up in a highly ordered chain of single-file carbon
tetrahedrons, forming these diamond-core nanothreads.”
In much the same way ice forms in a bottle of very
cold Coca-Cola when you screw open the bottle slowly, releasing the pressure,
the benzene began to polymerize as the pressure was gradually reduced, Dewar
Flask Style!
The unstable electrons in the Pi-Bonds reacting with
the Pi bond electrons of another benzene ring above and below the plane of the
stable Sigma Bonds. The result is that alternative carbon atoms reacted with
other benzene rings above and below the plane of the Sigma Bonds, exactly where
the Pi-Bonds are located. This resulted in tetrahedral arrangements consisting
of three (3) Carbon atoms and one Hydrogen atom sticking outwards, all linked
by Sigma Bonds.
The Sigma Bonds that made up the main plane of the
Benzene ring remained intact, resulting in a hollow cylindrical like structure
that looks a lot like a double helix the DNA (Deoxy Ribonucleic Acid) but much,
much thinner and with no cross linkages aside from the pre-existing Sigma Bonds.
Good to note all this happens at Room Temperature,
albeit it would be fair to say that the added vibration energy caused by the
increased pressure may have cause a slight temperature increase within the
Paris-Edinburgh Pressure Cooker.
Still, the polymerization that occurred was
astounding, as it was totally unexpected and had never before been witnessed by
scientists and physicists alike, to quote Dr. John Badding: “It really is
surprising that this kind of organization happens. “That the atoms of the benzene molecules link
themselves together at room temperature to make a thread is shocking to
chemists and physicists. Considering earlier experiments, we think that, when
the benzene molecule breaks under very high pressure, its atoms want to grab
onto something else but they can’t move around because the pressure removes all
the space between them. This benzene then becomes highly reactive so that, when
we release the pressure very slowly, an orderly polymerisation reaction happens
that forms the diamond-core nanothread”.
Applications
of Diamond Nanothreads - Japanese
Obayashi wants Space Elevators by 2050
Space Elevators are the most obvious application
that readily comes to mind albeit many others abound.
Already a Japanese firm Obayashi plans to use such
lightweight material based on Carbon such as CNT (Carbon Nanotubes) and
possibly this new Diamond Nanothread to make 60,000 miles (96,000 km) long
cables that can stretch into Space to make a Space elevator as reported in the
article “Elevator
into Space: Japanese Firm determined to Proceed with Bold Enginering Project”,
published September 23, 2014 by Trevor Mogg, DigitalTrends.
The idea is blessedly simple. First, they’d launch a
satellite into geo-stationary orbit with a manned crew onboard.
Then they'd shoot a pontoon towards Earth with a one
end attached to a very long spool of rope made of CNT lowering it though the
atmosphere until it reached to the location where the engineers would attach it
to the ground. Several more cables later, the Space Elevator would be
established at 22,400 miles (36,000 km) above Earth.
A Space Elevator using Maglev elevators similar to
those designed by ThyssenKrupp Elevator as described in my MICO Wars Blog
article entitled “ThyssenKrupp
Elevator develops
MULTI,
a Multi-Dimensional Travel Maglev by 2016”
would make going into Outer Space very easy, reducing and eventually eliminating
the need to launch rockets into Space.
It would greatly increase the amount of payload that
can be lifted into Space, even allowing untrained individuals to go into Outer
Space without the need for Training like regular Astronauts.
Space tourism for the Masses, basically!
Current technology to fabricate ropes made from
CNT's can only make ropes that are 3cm long to quote research and development
manager at Obayashi, Yoji Ishikawa: “Right now we can’t make the cable long
enough. We can only make 3-cm-long nanotubes, but we need much more. We think
by 2030 we’ll be able to do it”.
This is the same problem Diamond Nanothread also
faces, as it cannot be readily fabricated into long spools of fiber as theirs
is Laboratory process not a large-scale Manufacturing one to quote Dr. John
Badding: “The high pressures that we used to make the first diamond nanothread
material limit our production capacity to only a couple of cubic millimetres at
a time, so we are not yet making enough of it to be useful on an industrial
scale. One of our science goals is to remove that limitation by figuring out
the chemistry necessary to make these diamond nanothreads under more practical
conditions.”
Obayashi will probably develope a method to make
miles and miles of lightweight and super-strong CNT by 2030 to build their
Space Elevator by 2050. But with this latest discovery of Diamond Nanothreads,
an alternative material now exists that my potentially be even stronger and
lighter than CNT and may also have other unknown properties, such as
super-conductivity.
For now, I'd really like to use this to make a
really great necklace, a bullet proof dress or an incredible chainsaw that can
cut through any material in seconds.
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