Posted on 06/10/2008 3:37:54 PM PDT by CarrotAndStick
This newspaper is printed on paper made from cellulose fibers obtained from wood pulp. The fibers are fairly large, on the order of tens of micrometers wide, and the resulting paper is fairly weak — pulls on it and it tears easily.
Researchers in Sweden and Japan have developed a much stronger paper, made from much smaller fibrils of cellulose.
This "nanopaper" has a tensile strength greater than that of cast iron.
Marielle Henriksson of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and colleagues used enzymes and a gentle beating technique to produce fibrils on the order of tens of nanometers wide, roughly one-thousandth of the width of conventional fibers. They were then mixed with water, and the suspension was vacuum filtered to make paper.
They suggest that this property is a result of the high strength of individual fibrils and the way they adhere to one another.
Don’t know about cast iron. Seems like a brittle thing to work with. Mild steel is easy to work with: fast, strong, cheap.
:^)
In the New Scientist link in the earlier post of mine, there is some more information about this material.
re: This could be used to make paper guns, bullets, and knives
Maybe these are the “safer guns and safer bullets” Dr. Jocelyn Elders was talking about.
The practical application solutions will depend on what other “normal” attributes of paper, besides “strength” will be affected by the “nano-fiber” production and whether or not those other affects will be positive, negative or neutral.
Wonder how some people will shred all the "evidence" i.e. Whitewater?
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