(July 9, 2012) What’s 100 times stronger than
steel, weighs one-sixth as much and can be snapped like a twig by a tiny air
bubble? The answer is a carbon nanotube — and a new study by Rice University
scientists details exactly how the much-studied nanomaterials snap when
subjected to ultrasonic vibrations in a liquid.
“We find that the old saying ‘I will
break but not bend’ does not hold at the micro- and nanoscale,” said Rice
engineering researcher Matteo Pasquali, the lead scientist on the study, which
appears this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Carbon nanotubes — hollow tubes
of pure carbon about as wide as a strand of DNA — are one of the most-studied
materials in nanotechnology. For well over a decade, scientists have used
ultrasonic vibrations to separate and prepare nanotubes in the lab. In the new
study, Pasquali and colleagues show how this process works — and why it’s a
detriment to long nanotubes. That’s important for researchers who want to make
and study long nanotubes.