Isn’t graphene even more fun? Carbon chainmail

Posted on April 12, 2013 | 3 Comments

Thought for the day:

graphene

Graphene, picture from cnx.org

 

chainmail

A Chainmail structure, picture from 123rf.com

It’s a bit easier to see how the links overlap in this pic:

colour chainmail

 

pic from mediafocus.com

So, just thinking out loud, perhaps the rings in the chainmail above could be rings of carbon, just 6 atoms each. If so, would this be better than graphene at anything useful, or not? Would longer rings work better? The idea of carbon nanotube chainmail is about a decade old.

Carbon chainmail

 

Powerpoint really is not designed as a proper drawing tool and not having a week to spare, I didn’t bother doing the link overlaps or even the bonds properly in my pic, but together with the other two, I think you will get the idea fine.

I don’t know if this will work or not, but it might be an idea worth looking at further.

 

 

 

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3 responses to “Isn’t graphene even more fun? Carbon chainmail”

  1. GP | April 12, 2013 at 11:48 am | Reply

    Reblogged this on The Law of News.

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  2. Nick C | April 14, 2013 at 2:30 pm | Reply

    I think the ‘along plane’ strength of graphene is pretty good already. But, for practical applications it needs to be stronger still. I’m not sure Ian’s technique would make as significant as desired increase in planar tensile strength when it comes to such. I’m not actually sure if two bonds attempting to interfere with one another is stronger than a single bond.
    What may be required is multiple stacked layers of large graphene sheets. However, there is a problem. Because of very weak inter sheet forces they will tend to slide over one another… Just as it does in graphite which we all know is a great lubricant (e.g. Pencil lead). However, extend Ian’s idea to cross link between sheets and we might have something special?

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  3. AnonyMole | April 28, 2013 at 7:49 pm | Reply

    Graphene chainmail, gloves for butchers, poisonous snake handlers, ovenmitts (smelting, glass blowing), bulletproof vests, motorcycle rider leathers, the list goes on and on.

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