Abstract
CARBON NANOTUBES are taking rubbery behavior to new extremes. A novel rubberlike material made from long, tangled strands of single-, double-, and triple-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) maintains its viscoelasticity at temperatures as low as –196 °C and as high as 1,000 °C in an oxygen-free environment ( Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1194865). Most rubbery materials, in contrast, turn brittle in the cold and degrade when things heat up. Because of its temperature-invariant viscoelasticity, the CNT-based material could find use in vehicles that travel to the cold reaches of interstellar space. It could also be used inside high-vacuum furnaces, where it could take the heat without running the risk of reacting with oxygen. A team led by Don N. Futaba, Kenji Hata, and Ming Xu of the Nanotube Research Center at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science & Technology (AIST) created the CNT-based material using a combination of water-assisted chemical vapor deposition, reactive ion etching of the ...
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