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Originally Posted by jamesqf
I don't see how that could possibly be. If you look at e.g. line losses in electric power transmission over copper wires, they run about 10%, so even a perfect conductor could only improve by that 10%.]
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Yeah, fell into the same trap when I first started working with these.
It's the difference between conductance vs conductivity:
Electrical conductance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Electrical conductivity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is the best explanation without all the vector and tensor equations making things more complicated than they need to.
Everyone reports current densities of 1000x Cu, or even higher for carbon nanotubes.
But if conductivity is equal to current density over electric field strength one must assume that the electric field strength in Cu and Carbon nanotubes is the same.
I would have thought with a 1000x higher current density that the electric field strength would be higher and thus would reduce the ratio.
Wouldn't be the first time I was wrong!
Might well rest with those previously mention vector and tensor equations.
One consequence of this is that a cabon nanotube can be 1/1,000, in theory, the cross section (or less) of an equivalent Cu cable carrying the same amount of current.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesqf
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Good link!
Also, other on going work have used both "buckyballs" and nanotubes (carbon and other compositions) as cages to hold other elements and compounds.
These materials exhibit such promising characteristics as super-conduction, helium traps, and fission fuel containment and moderation.