A few days late on the uptake it seems but I will go it anyway.
Some folks over at Rice University claim to have a process that could spit out carbon nanotubes/nanowires in something resembling an industrial quantity and as an added bonus it does not seem to require anything overly exotic to pull off (though still not stuff you will probably be making in your kitchen any time soon).
Carbon nanotubes have repeatedly cropped up in science journals over the years (or indeed millennia if you follow various developments in archaeometallurgy) as their potential is huge, the trouble has traditionally been in creating tubes of sufficient length and purity (at various points single walled carbon nanotubes were considerably more costly that even the priciest diamonds, today they are somewhat comparable).
The team at Rice University seem somewhat focused on the implications for electrical devices though they do not downplay the options for other areas where nanotubes could be very useful.
One video released with the press statement
Source for some of this. The statement linked at the start has quite a bit more as well.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/14/carbon_nanotube_threads_spun/
Some folks over at Rice University claim to have a process that could spit out carbon nanotubes/nanowires in something resembling an industrial quantity and as an added bonus it does not seem to require anything overly exotic to pull off (though still not stuff you will probably be making in your kitchen any time soon).
Carbon nanotubes have repeatedly cropped up in science journals over the years (or indeed millennia if you follow various developments in archaeometallurgy) as their potential is huge, the trouble has traditionally been in creating tubes of sufficient length and purity (at various points single walled carbon nanotubes were considerably more costly that even the priciest diamonds, today they are somewhat comparable).
The team at Rice University seem somewhat focused on the implications for electrical devices though they do not downplay the options for other areas where nanotubes could be very useful.
One video released with the press statement
Source for some of this. The statement linked at the start has quite a bit more as well.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/14/carbon_nanotube_threads_spun/