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| Silica nanowires get stronger as they get smaller |
"Weight for weight, silica nanowires are 15 times stronger than high strength steel and 10 times stronger than conventional GRP (Glass Reinforced Plastic)," explained Payne, who in the 80s invented the erbium-doped fibre amplifier (EDFA) technology that boosts signals carried on fibre optics.
"We can decrease the amount of material used thereby reducing the weight of the object… we can [also] produce silica nanofibres by the tonne, just as we currently do for the optical fibres that power the internet."
The nanowires are made from two of the most common elements in the Earth's crust -- silica and oxygen -- making it a cheap and profitable bet for developers. Furthermore, unlike carbon nanotubes or graphene -- slated as the super strong, super conductive miracle material -- the team believes it can potentially be constructed in lengths of wire thousands of kilometres long (carbon nanotunes, by comparison, have only been shown to maintain their strength at the size of a few microns).
To develop nanowires that maintain their strength in mass production like this (trials on other nanowires have shown that defects occur even when they're far from this stage) would be to transform massive areas in the field of engineering.
"Usually if you increase the strength of a fibre you have to increase its diameter and thus its weight," said Payne's colleague Gilberto Brambilla, principal research fellow at the University of Southampton's Optoelectronics Research Centre (together the two have been working on developing the material for the past five years).
"But our research has shown that as you decrease the size of silica nanofibres their strength increases, yet they still remain very lightweight. We are the only people who currently have optimised the strength of these fibres."
The five year long investigation was no easy feat, Brambilla told a seminar at Kavli Royal Society International Centre, at Chicheley Hall.
"[Nanowires] are nearly 1,000 times smaller than a human hair and I was handling them with my bare hands," he said. "It took me some time to get used to it, but… I was able to discover that silica nanofibres become stronger the smaller they get. In fact when they become very, very small they behave in a completely different way.
They stop being fragile and don't break like glass but instead become ductile and break like plastic. This means they can be strained a lot."
Brambilla envisions the nanowires one day being used in aviation and the production of other vehicles that rely on being as lightweight as possible
Wired
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