Theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and his team at Rice University have taken an unusual approach to analyzing the possible configurations of two-dimensional sheets of boron, as reported this week in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters.
Treating it as Swiss cheese – in which the holes are as defining as the cheese itself – was the key concept in figuring out what atom-thin sheets of boron might look like. Those sheets, when rolled into a hollow tube, or nanotube, could have a distinct advantage over carbon nanotubes; boron nanotubes are always metallic, while the carbon atoms in a nanotubes can be arranged to form either metallic or semiconducting nanotubes. This variation in atomic arrangement — known as chirality — is one of the major hurdles to carbon nanotube processing and development.
“If I dream wildly, I like to think boron nanotubes would make a great energy-transporting quantum wire,” said Yakobson, Rice’s Karl F. Hasselmann Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and professor of chemistry. “It would have the benefits of carbon, but without the challenge of selecting a particular symmetry.”
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