Carbon for cloth
Carbon is a pretty amazing element. It is the building block for life as we know it, and it can form both the hardest known mineral, diamonds, and one of the softest substances, graphite. With the advent of nanotechnology, it can also be shaped into microscopic soccer balls (buckyballs) or nanotubes. The latter is particularly exciting - these are exactly what they sound like, tiny tubes made of carbon which can conduct electricity and work a little bit like ordinary thread. Of course this is hard to do, and obviously the fibres are very small - but scientists from CSIRO in Australia and University of Texas at Dallas have developed a way to spin these tiny fibres together to create nanotube yarn several kilometers long.
These “nanofibres” could be used to make intelligent bandages that would report when someone was hurt, or adjust to help an injury. They might also be used to make artificial muscles for robot soldiers or, hopefully, robotics in other areas of life and technology. In fact, these fibres are roughly as strong as Kevlar, used for bullet proof vests! Applications are still five years away, says the Australian team leader Ken Atikinson, but nanotechnology is rapidly going to change the world we live in.