Researchers at Rice University (Houston) believe they have overcome the major hurdle to industrial production of macroscale single-walled carbon nanotube objects - finding a way to store large amounts of nanotubes in liquid form. The process, which is similar to the one used first to make Kevlar, offers the first real hope of making threads, cables and sheets of pure carbon nanotubes. By dissolving nanotubes in strong sulfuric acid, they achieved solutions containing up to 10% by weight of pure carbon nanotubes - more than 10 times the highest concentrations previously achieved. This processing route uses no polymeric additives or detergents, which are known to be obstacles to commercial scalability and final product purity. For more information please contact M Pasquali, email: mp@rice.edu
