Omax 55100 JetMachining Center at the High-Performance Materials Institute is used to cut a wide variety of components, including carbon fiber composites.
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single-walled nanotubes are about $200 a gram and the price continues to decline. Furthermore, multi-walled nano- tubes are available for purchase by the pound and nanofi- bers by the barrel. Allen noted that the facility tailors which form of nanotubes it uses based on properties required for the buckypaper. “We don’t always need the more expensive single-wall nanotubes to get the properties we want,” Allen said. “The quality of the nanotubes we use makes a difference, and right now we are trying to make it cheaper by improving the manu- facturing process of the buckypaper.”
In an attempt to make buckypaper more commercially feasible, the High-Performance Materials Institute is looking to scale up its production by working on a prototype that would produce buckypaper strips at 5 fpm (1.5 m/min). While HPMI research on buckypaper is at the forefront
of a technological revolution, it is still in its infancy stage. But despite the hurdles that come with trying to produce buckypaper for practical use, the researchers at Florida State University are not about to give up. And why should they? Even Thomas Edison’s improvement of the light bulb did not happen overnight. He relied on existing research to invent a total of seven system elements before the practi- cal application of electric light was possible. Buckypaper use in aerospace production will likewise eventually see the light of day. ME