Highly desirable diamond nano threads, which are as solid as diamond and as pliable as plastic, have the potential to alter our world—if only they had not been so hard to manufacture. Researchers headed by Carnegie’s Samuel Dunning and Timothy Strobel have devised an innovative approach that anticipates and leads the ordered development of strong, but malleable, diamond nano threads while overcoming a number of previously encountered difficulties.
Researchers will be able to produce nano threads more easily as a result of the breakthrough, which is a crucial step toward bringing the materials to actual applications in the future. The results of this research were released previously in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Diamond nano threads are thinner than a human hair in terms of thickness. Their formation is often achieved by squeezing small carbon-based bands together to produce the same sort of connection that renders diamonds the toughest substance on the face of the earth.
Nonetheless, rather than the 3D-carbon matrix seen in a conventional diamond, the ends of such threads are “tipped” by hydrogen and carbon bonds, allowing the entire form to be more elastic. In the future, researchers believe that the special qualities of carbon nano threads can have a wide variety of valuable uses, ranging from supplying space elevators with sci-fi-like structures to making ultra-strong materials. But it has been difficult for scientists to produce sufficient quantities of nano thread material to put their supposed superpowers to the test.
Reliable reactions between carbon atoms are one of the most difficult problems to solve. Each carbon atom in nano threads comprised of benzene and other six-atom rings have the ability to initiate chemical interactions with a distinct neighboring carbon atom. As a result, there are several alternative responses that compete with one another, as well as numerous distinct nano thread arrangements. This ambiguity is one of the most significant obstacles that scientists must overcome in order to produce nano threads whose exact chemical composition can be identified.
