Scientists at Rice University, United States, have developed a cable that could eventually replace the country’s copper-based grid, making an efficient electric grid of the future possible. The new cable, armchair quantum wire (AQW) is a weave of metallic nanotubes that can carry electricity with negligible loss over long distances. The current grid leaks electricity at an estimated five percent per 100 miles of transmission. The new cable uses armchair-shaped carbon nanotubes that only grow in batches with other kinds of carbon nanotubes. A prime technical hurdle has been separating the armchair nanotubes out from the other kinds of nanotubes. Andrew R. Barron, a chemist, demonstrated a way to take small batches of individual nanotubes and make them dramatically longer. This “amplification” could mean that long armchair nanotubes could be cut, re-seeded with catalyst and re-grown indefinitely. Wade Adams, director of Rice’s Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, said, “All this now has to come together in a grand program to turn quantum wires into a product that will carry vast amounts of electricity around the world.” The team will continue to fine tune their process and hope to begin amplifying armchair nanotubes by summer’s end, with the goal of making large quantities of pure metallics. Their latest work has been published in the journal Nano Letters.
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