Welcome to the Carbon Allotropes page hosted by Walla Walla University. This project was developed and is maintained by Dr. Tom Ekkens. If you have comments or suggestions please send email to tom.ekkens@wallawalla.edu. 

Walla Walla University first offered a class in Nanotechnology in 2008 for senior physics and engineering majors.  In the years since then, a goal of several of the labs has been to examine the difference between devices created with design only at the macroscale and those with design or building units at the nanoscale.  Ideally the devices should produce macroscope differences.

This page compliments the article submitted to The Physics Teacher and printed in the (fill in this date when known) issue which presents an experiment that shows dramatically different behavior for superstructure growth of carbon based on the structural form of the carbon building blocks.  Most of the details of the experiment are given in the article and the video results are presented here.

The single-walled nanotube samples are prepared using this recipe:

1. 10 mL of distilled water is poured into a small glass bottle.
2. A small dusting of nanotubes is added to the bottle by a wooden toothpick and the bottle is capped.
3. For a minute or two, the solution is agitated by shaking it.

The wires are taped to a microscope slide and several drops of the mixed solution are added between the wires so the ends of each wire and the area between them are in the solution.  The video recording is started and the power supply connected to the opposite end of each wire is turned on.

In this video, the voltage between the positive lead on the left and the negative lead on the right is 32V.  The higher voltage produces structures that are much thinner, extend quickly, and break more often.  The first structure forms at the 2 minute mark.

The random form of carbon is found in soot.  This soot was collected from holding a butane lighter close to a piece of metal to deposit a smoky residue.

The soot sample is prepared using the recipe:

1. 10 mL of distilled water is poured into a small glass bottle.
2. A small dusting of soot is added to the bottle by a wooden toothpick and the bottle is capped.
3. For a minute or two, the solution is agitated by shaking it. 

To reduce contamination from the nanotubes, a new bottle, a new microscope slide, new wires, and new toothpicks are used.  The video recording is started and the power supply turned on.

• 0:00             Video started.
• 0:07 - 0:10  Several drops of solution (DI water and soot) are added.
• 0:15             Power supply turned on:  31V, 68μA.
• 0:20 - 3:40  Bubbles and “wisps” form.  Current drops slowly to 30μA.

Another random form of carbon is found in the “activate charcoal powder” found many health food stores.  The video below is from charcoal.  The “wisps” are slightly different that those in seen in the soot sample.  As in soot, the large current carrying structures do not form.  Compared to soot, the 25V voltage was the same but the current was higher starting at 450μA and slowly reducing to 77μA.