Nanotube research at its beginnings

Hour after hour, Satya Bulusu, a graduate chemistry student, checked the PrarieFire supercomputer for the results of its computations.

After three months of configurations, the computer finally spat out the virtual molecule that Bulusu and his teammates had been looking for.

Under the direction of Xiao Cheng Zeng, Willa Cather professor of chemistry at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Bulusu used the supercomputer in combination with computations from Washington State University to determine the point where the element boron changes from a sheet of molecules to a 3-D ring.

“We ran the supercomputer for three months and searched thousands of structures and found that at 20 molecules, boron was shaped like a ring if you added an electron,” Zeng said.

Currently, the ring, which the team jokingly calls “Lord of the Nanorings,” only exists in the virtual world. But with the right conditions, like a colder temperature, the ring could be made solid, Zeng said.

If scientists can further research and development on this ring, Bulusu said, they could make a boron nanotube that would be superior to the current carbon one. This tube could be used for insulation in nanotechnology, transportation of molecules and radon detection.

“We have a carbon insulator nanotube now, but the boron tube would be better because they do not conduct like carbon ones do,” Bulusu said.

Although the ring has possibilities, without more research Bulusu said they don’t know exactly what it could be used for.

“This is just a starting point. We hope the ring can be made into something useful in the future,” Bulusu said.

Zeng and his team of nine made the discovery by virtually building up a boron molecule atom by atom.

“We were like kids with building blocks, one piece at a time,” he said.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences published the experiment in January.

Zeng said being published in a journal that covered such a broad range of topics was good for the field of computational chemistry at UNL.

“I’m hoping there will be more students coming into their field after they hear of the research. When I was a graduate student there was no way to do this kind of research,” Zeng said.

Zeng said his team would continue to look at and build up molecules at the nano level. Currently they are examining gold atoms.

Bulusu said this type of work encourages his fellow graduate students to continue experimenting.

“People really work hard and many times they can’t find anything with all their effort. So to be a graduate student and actually find something is very encouraging for all of us,” he said.