The mechanism by which carbon nanotubes break or bend under the influence of bubbles during sonication is the topic of a new paper led by researchers at Rice University. The team found that short nanotubes are drawn end-first into collapsing bubbles, stretching them, while longer ones are more prone to breakage. Image Credit: Pasquali Lab/Rice University
“If the nanotube is short, one end will get drawn down by the collapsing bubble so that the nanotube is aligned toward the center of the bubble. In this case, the tube doesn’t bend, but rather stretches. This behavior had been previously predicted, but we also found that long nanotubes did something unexpected. The model showed how the collapsing bubble drew longer nanotubes inward from the middle, bending them and snapping them like twigs.”
Tiny bubbles snap carbon nanotubes like twigs
What’s 100 times stronger than steel, weighs one-sixth as much and can be snapped like a twig by a tiny air bubble? The answer is a carbon nanotube — and a new study by Rice University scientists details exactly how the much-studied nanomaterials snap when subjected to ultrasonic vibrations in a liquid.
“We find that the old saying ‘I will break but not bend’ does not hold at the micro- and nanoscale,” said Rice engineering researcher Matteo Pasquali, the lead scientist on the study, which appears this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The mechanism by which carbon nanotubes break or bend under the influence of bubbles during sonication is the topic of a new paper led by researchers at Rice University. The team found that short nanotubes are drawn end-first into collapsing bubbles, stretching them, while longer ones are more prone to breakage. Image Credit: Pasquali Lab/Rice University….
