Boron Nitride Nanotubes Getting Commercial R&D, Likely Future Armor
Nearly 20 years ago researcher Alex Zettl of the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) synthesized in his laboratory a new material never before found in nature: boron nitride nanotubes, the strongest, lightest, most thermally conducting and most chemically resistant fiber known to exist. Now a startup has licensed this technology with the aim of manufacturing boron nitride nanotubes for commercial use.Nanowerk reports about this new material:
These textile-like nanotubes with the appearance of cotton have a molecular backbone 100 times stronger than steel. They are as strong as the better-known carbon nanotubes (CNTs), but much more heat resistant - up to 800C in air and very resistant to many chemical modifications.There's more about the material on Wikipedia.
"So far, it has been generally accepted knowledge that BNNT are highly inert to oxidative treatments and can only be covalently modified by highly reactive species," Zhongfang Chen, a Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), tells Nanowerk. "By contrast, oxidation of CNTs has been proven very convenient and fundamentally important to modify the nanotube structure and morphology via controlled corrosive effects."
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