China Carbon Nano Tube Research Wins World-class Achievement

July 7, iAbrasive report. Recently Chinese Scientists have accomplished world-class achievement in new material field: Professor Liyan from Peking University, together with her associate team, managed to work out methods to control growth rules of Carbon Nano Tube (CNT). The unparalleled achievement was published on authorized academic periodical "Nature" magazine.

CNT is a new "super material", whose intensity is 300 times as intense as steel with one-sixth density of the steel. What's more, CNT is expected to become alternative material of silicon, which makes mobile phones, computers in smaller sizes and more powerful functions. However, CNT is made of carbon atoms which may take on different permutations like pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, etc. Up till now, people have little idea about how to control its structure in order to produce CNT with given performance. The problem has been a difficult task for international scientific community. Professor Liyan, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, together with her associate team, chose ethyl alcohol as raw material and a new type of tungsten-based alloy as catalyst to do experiments by Chemical Vapor Deposition, a method commonly used in making semi-conductor materials. The experiment was successful to have discovered CNT with even growing structure. The discovery is significant in that it lays the foundation of CNT further research.

The unparalleled achievement was published on authorized academic periodical "Nature" magazine. Liyan as well as her associate team has received high compliments from international peers due to the significant CNT research achievement.

What is CNT

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are allotropes of carbon with a cylindrical nanostructure. Nanotubes have been constructed with length-to-diameter ratio of up to 132,000,000:1, significantly larger than for any other material. These cylindrical carbon molecules have unusual properties, which are valuable for nanotechnology, electronics, optics and other fields of materials science and technology. In particular, owing to their extraordinary thermal conductivity and mechanical and electrical properties, carbon nanotubes find applications as additives to various structural materials. For instance, nanotubes form a tiny portion of the materials in some (primarily carbon fiber) baseball bats, golf clubs, or car parts.