Scientists from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology have developed the thinnest super-conductive carbon nanotube in the world. The newly developed nanotube is just zero-point-four nanometers in diameter.

As Susan Lee Smith reports, the size of super-conductors may be greatly reduced because of the new scientific finding.

Scientists from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology discovered that at temperatures below 15 degrees Celsius [5 degrees Fahrenheit], a carbon nanotube, zero-point-four nanometers in diameter, is super conductive.

The new discovery makes it possible to produce the smallest super-conductor, which consumes little power. As a result, many super-conductive electronic parts in machines like computers and cars can be made smaller.

A nanometer is one thousand millionths of a meter. Nano-technology deals with the manipulation of individual atoms and molecules.

Nanotubes were first developed in 1991 by Japanese scientists, as a two-nanometer carbon nanotube. They predicted that the minimum achievable diameter of a nanotube was zero-point-four. Scientists from the Hong Kong University of Technology invented the predicted nanotube last November.

Therefore the discovery of the nanotube's super-conductive quality marks the University's second landmark discovery in nano-technology.

(People's Daily 07/05/2001)