But if you think that's about as cool as the carbon material can get, listen to this: It can also be used to make ultrashort-pulse lasers.
One big seller: the coal-derived carbon material that is used in the smelting of aluminum, which in turn is in strong demand in the airplane and construction industries.
It remains unknown where the segment fit into the wing, but it included reinforced carbon-carbon material, which protects the leading edge of shuttle wings from the 3, 000-degree Fahrenheit heat of atmospheric re-entry.
Furthermore, the 787 is made of carbon fiber material, rather than aluminum.
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All that's needed, apparently, is an energy source, some sort of carbon-based material and a bit of water.
Takao Someya of the University of Tokyo has built for himself a stretchy, flexible conducting material using carbon nanotubes mixed with a polymer.
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To convince wary airline executives that carbon-fiber body material was strong, Boeing sales teams carried samples and hammers, letting airline executives whack the composite with all their might.
In some locations, sedimentation created sufficient pressure to convert -- to cook -- the unoxidized carbon in the organic material into oil, some of which was trapped in reservoirs.
This is because the degree of carbonisation of organic material as measured with electron spin resonance is dependent only upon the amount of carbon and not on the time material has been heated for.
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Pioneer also uses material interlaced with carbon fibers to make speakers lighter and stronger.
The most promising sail material has a carbon-fibre backing coated with a thin layer (just a few tens of atoms thick) of aluminium.
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Soil samples from around the stone's socket will be analysed and any organic material found radio-carbon dated if possible.
The other raw material for photosynthesis, carbon dioxide, will be supplied as the exhaust from industrial plants such as power stations, oil refineries and natural-gas processors.
He says this will create regional jobs, increase resource security, reduce consumption of non-renewable resources, increase material efficiency and prevent carbon emissions and industrial waste - all on a big scale.
Like traditional composites, Dr Greenhalgh's material consists of woven sheets of carbon fibres which are made rigid using a cured resin.
The hope is that pairing up researchers and businesses will hasten the development of material and component manufacturing processes for the carbon-based substance, and make it possible for graphene to find its way into products such as flexible electronics, batteries and faster processors.
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Meanwhile, the US Forest Service has been deriving cellulose nanocrystals from wood pulp extract to create a material that's stronger than Kevlar and carbon fiber.
Using carbon fiber also means that Boeing has no previous experience with how the material behaves in flight.
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It took carbon fibre a quarter of a century to go from laboratory curiosity to engineering material.
Belonging to a class of worlds known as diamond planets, 55 Cancri e is thought to be rich in the element carbon, which can exist in a variety of structural forms such as graphite (the material used as pencil lead), graphene, or diamond.
Instead, the carbon fibre is shipped to SGL Automotive's German factory in Wackersdorf, where a thermoplastic material is injected to bind them together into reinforced plastic sheets.
Carbon dioxide, the result of burning fuel, is, together with water and sunlight, the raw material of photosynthesis.
There was even speculation about a dark material on the tiny planet that could conceivably contain the same organic molecules being hunted on Mars, the carbon-based building blocks that are essential to all life.
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