DailyDirt: Conducting Electricity In Unlikely Ways

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Human history was once defined by advances in materials, going from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age to the Age of Steel. Material science could still revolutionize society, but the advances would have to be much more impressive -- like creating a room-temperature superconductor (or transparent aluminum). Here are just a few curious developments in the field of material science.

• The ability to manufacture lots of long carbon nanotubes (CNTs) could replace copper wiring someday. However, current CNTs aren't as electrically conductive as copper, and they aren't as easy to solder to existing electrical systems, either. [url]
• Liquid cement can be made into a semi-conductor to form a metallic-glass material. New materials made with this technique could have better corrosion resistance than traditional metals, less brittleness than regular glass materials, and fluidity that would allow the material to be molded and processed easily. [url]
• Normally, carbon disulfide is a non-polar solvent, but when subjected to intense pressure (50,000 atm) and extreme cold (6.5 K), it can become a superconducting material. It's not likely that this particular discovery will have many practical applications, but it could lead to a better understanding of how (super)conductivity behaves. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: carbon disulfide, carbon nanotubes, chemistry, cnt, material science, nanotechnology, science, semiconductor, superconductivity