Carbon nanotube synthesis experiments

so with July and my trip to Chile for EXO's for your fast approaching it's almost time to pack up my lab and head off as such I won't be making another video probably until I'm in Chile when I can talk about my exciting personal project while I'm there you can expect very frequent videos as I'm going to be documenting the whole process the stuff we'll be covering in the course as well as my personal project automate for some of the most exciting videos that I've made thus far and I'm honestly very excited in the meantime I wanted to talk about a few experiments I ran during the year that I either had to put aside and we'll get back to or weren't exciting enough to warrant their own video since high school I've been fascinated by carbon nanotubes that have been trying to grow them my first attempt was when I was first getting into making vacuum chambers and really wasn't very good since then better techniques have become well studied and I tried to replicate a few of them the first was for what could be called the most conventional method for making carbon nanotubes I bought a pair of quartz tubes and connected them using some sodium silicate I ended up having to buy the pair because they didn't sell a longer tube which would have been much better i fashioned a metal connection for the hot side and plugged the other with a rubber stopper and added fittings for connection through a gas tank since the reaction takes place at about 700 degrees I originally intended to heat the tube with an electric furnace I based the design for my furnace on a tin can port which there are great videos and Instructables showing how to build I modified the design so that the tube could fit all the way through the middle and I got some kanthal heating wire to act as my heat source I tried a few different methods of powering the wire but nothing worked really well I know now that I need a temperature controller or an infinite switch to control the wire and have incorporated that in future designs I also needed a better alternative to the quartz tube but more on that later at the time of filming this I eventually got frustrated trying to get the electronics to work and figured I'd try something a little more simple I modified my furnace to work using a blowtorch and try it again this time I could easily get the tube up to temperature so I set up my nitrogen tank and put a leaf in the tube try and carbonize it sure enough worked great unfortunately the silicate connection didn't appreciate the direct heats of the seal ended up breaking stinking up my lab I ended up dropping the tube furnace idea for a little while and decided to try something different there are loads of papers that talk about using a high amperage arc between two graphite rods to generate the carbon nanotubes in fact this is one of the first ways they were readily synthesized and how I initially tried to make them back in high school most methods require the arc be made in a partial vacuum with helium and I tried this but since I was unable to adjust the rods I couldn't strike the initial arc and I was worried that if even if I could it could cause the chamber to shatter and implode then I stumbled onto a paper that talked about the same procedure but they performed it in deionized water just in air this struck me as being are easier so I decided to give it a try I built little stand using PVC and used one of my rewound microwave oven transformers to generate the high current this turned out to be a major dud there wasn't nearly enough amperage so the ARCA deuces and while i'm sure that some carbon nanotubes probably formed the amount was so minuscule it wasn't enough to care about so i rewound another transformer to a bit higher voltage and this worked much better I can see spot on the rods that are noticeably darker and an iridescent film formed on the surface of the water but the power was still way too low what I really need is an electric arc welder to act as my current source or to get another transformer so I can just build one finally I learned from my mistakes with the tin can tube furnace and built this this is the beginnings of a paint bucket tube furnace it can be run on a variety of energy sources from charcoal to propane and can even be made electric the inlet pipe allows me to fill the chamber with an inert gas like argon so the carbon inside can graph'it eyes without burning a mode of time before summer when I come home we'll be finishing this off and using it to not only grow nanotubes but also to make custom graphite carbon fiber and hopefully carbon nanotubes this apparatus can also be used to activate carbon with molten potassium hydroxide again more on that in a future video in the future I'll be revisiting many of these concepts improving on them from what I've learned and hopefully making some really cool carbon materials I'll even be attempting to make the bulletproof or on carbide fabric that was going around in the news a while ago once I've gotten the various projects working properly I'll make full instructional videos showing how I made everything so look forward to all that starting probably in September ok guys that's all I've got for this video I hope you've enjoyed if you have be sure to subscribe rate and leave me a comment with what you thought and if you've got any suggestions for how I can improve any of these concepts if you haven't already be sure to check out my last video on VLF low frequency natural radio it sounded really cool and you should definitely check it out like on the screen and in shanky also be sure to check out the description down below for all the usual social media links where I post extra content I'm scenes all kinds of fun stuff so be sure to check all that out and I'll see you next time

Channel: The Thought Emporium

Views: 58,128

Rating: 4.8145418 out of 5

Keywords: carbon nanotubes, carbon, nanotubes, graphite, carbon fiber, carbon fibre, boron carbide, tube furnace, tube, furnace, high current, welder, pyrolysis, hot, flame synthesis, decomposition, experiments, diy

Id: thMwrdZX6a0

Length: 5min 15sec (315 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 12 2016