Boffins create world's smallest test tubes

[LibLabUK]

The world’s smallest test tube has been created by UK scientists. And the tiny structures could be used to produce materials with unique properties.

A team with members from the University of Oxford and the University of Nottingham created minuscule test tubes which are in fact carbon nanotubes. They then filled each tube with fullerene oxide molecules which were coerced into polymerising in an ordered way as a result of the tube's shape.

"The important thing is that we have a controlled reaction," says David Britz, of the University of Oxford who led the research. He adds that the tubes do not interfere chemically with the polymerisation process. "As far as we can tell it's just an inert container," Britz says.

The researchers believe this process could be used the create materials with novel molecular characteristics or even components for quantum computers.

Atomic fitting

Each nanotube has an inner diameter of 1.2 nanometres and is roughly 2000 nanometres long. A nanometre is one billionth of a metre, or one hundred thousandth the width of a human hair.

The researchers modified fullerenes, also known as buckyballs - soccer-ball-shaped carbon nanostructures - by adding a single oxygen atom to each buckyball in a chemical reaction in a conventional test tube.

The addition of oxygen enables the buckyballs to bind, or polymerise, at higher temperatures, although normally they do so in a disordered, random fashion.

The molecules were then inserted into the carbon nano test tubes using highly pressured carbon dioxide. Pressurised carbon dioxide turns supercritical and exists in a state between that of a gas and a liquid. It effectively repels the buckyballs, causing them to bind to the inside the carbon nanotubes.

"Apparently supercritical liquids are good for transporting buckyballs," says Andrei Khlobystov, another member of the team, from the University of Nottingham.

Source:New Scientist