Tallahassee - It's called "buckypaper" and looks like ordinary carbon paper, but don't be fooled. It could revolutionise the way everything from airplanes to TVs are made.Buckypaper is 10 times lighter but potentially 500 times stronger than steel when sheets of it are pressed together to form a composite. Unlike conventional composite materials, though, it conducts electricity and disperses heat."All those things are what a lot of people in nanotechnology have been working toward," said Wade Adams, a scientist at Rice University.
That idea - that there is great future promise for buckypaper and other derivatives of the ultra-tiny cylinders known as carbon nanotubes - has been floated for years. But now researchers at Florida State University say they have made important progress that may soon turn hype into reality.
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