Rock, Paper, Scissor...Buckypaper Wins?

Posted on CNN early today:

It's called "buckypaper" and looks a lot like ordinary carbon paper, but don't be fooled by the cute name or flimsy appearance. It could revolutionize the way everything from airplanes to TVs are made.

Buckypaper is 10 times lighter but potentially 500 times stronger than steel when sheets of it are stacked and pressed together to form a composite. Unlike conventional composite materials, though, it conducts electricity like copper or silicon and disperses heat like steel or brass.

"All those things are what a lot of people in nanotechnology have been working toward as sort of Holy Grails," said Wade Adams, a scientist at Rice University.

That idea -- that there is great future promise for buckypaper and other derivatives of the ultra-tiny cylinders known as carbon nanotubes -- has been floated for years now. However, researchers at Florida State University say they have made important progress that may soon turn hype into reality.

Buckypaper is made from tube-shaped carbon molecules 50,000 times thinner than a human hair. Due to its unique properties, it is envisioned as a wondrous new material for light, energy-efficient aircraft and automobiles, more powerful computers, improved TV screens and many other products.









Florida State University researcher Ben Wang,
whose computer screen shows a microscopic view of buckypaper.

New Paper that Self Erases???

Recycling's better than sending good paper to the landfill. Even better is not printing in the first place. But there's still a lot of stuff that comes out of printers and some studies show that more than 40% gets discarded on the day it was produced (and a lot of the rest gets discarded not much later, or gets stuffed in a box and is never looked at again).

The researchers at XEROX looked at that problem and came up with a paper that self-erases within 24 hours and can then be re-used. Read on for more details.