Boron nitride nanotube materials sell for $1,000 per gram? Why is it so expensive?

by Julissa G. Content generator

Selling $1,000 per gram - this price is very expensive. Is boron nitride nanotube material worthy of the price, or is it just a sensation?

The pursuit of speed by mankind will never stop. Since the end of the jet passenger jet era in the late 1950s, the international civil aviation community has been pursuing the improvement of flight speed. The key to keeping vehicles and aircraft at high speed is to withstand the intense heat generated during the journey. For example, the retired supersonic passenger aircraft "Concord" - hard aluminum material on its surface enables the aircraft to withstand a frictional high temperature of up to 127 °C at an altitude of 15,000 meters, with a Mach 2.02 (immediate speed 2474 km, 1 Mach equals 1 speed of sound) Speed flight. However, in addition to the stable fuselage structure and light weight, the material coated with the aircraft is the key to whether the aircraft can fly at supersonic speed.

The protagonist of this article, the boron nitride nanotube material, was the raw materials for heat-dissipating coatings recently successfully developed by the US Air and Space Administration (NASA) and Binghamton University under the auspices of the US Air Force. The study has been published in the journal Science Report.

When boron nitride nanotube material is used as a heat-dissipating coating, it can withstand twice the high temperature of carbon nanotubes currently used in aircraft, which means it can make the aircraft withstand more intense heat, thereby improving Flight speed. It is possible that in the next 10 years, the aircraft will fly from the US East Coast to the West Bank at 5 times the speed of sound in less than an hour! This is why it sells so expensive.

The boron nitride nanotubes are currently priced at up to $1,000 per gram. For commercialization, the cost is too high. Even after the initial commercialization, the average person can't afford it. But it should be one step ahead in fighter or space probe applications; in addition to being applied to aircraft surfaces, boron nitride nanotubes can also be added to ceramics or metals to make them stronger; it may be possible to contribute to environmentally friendly cars or nanoelectronic industry.

Although the cost of boron nitride nanotubes is now high, it is generally believed that the development path of boron nitride nanotubes should be similar to that of carbon nanotubes - high-quality carbon nanotubes cost about $1000 20 years ago, but now its cost has dropped to 10 to 20 US dollars per gram.

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