Colossal Magnetoresistance the Manganites

5 Novel methods for making carbon and ceramic materials and artefacts 

At the start of this Chapter, an essay by Peter Day was quoted in which he lauds the use of soft chemistry , exemplifying this by citing the use of organometallic precursors for making thin films of various materials used in microelectronics. The same approach, but without the softness, is increasingly used to make ceramic fibres here, ceramic includes carbon (sometimes regarded as almost an independent state of matter because it is found in so many forms). 

Turning now to other types of ceramic fibre, the most important material made by pyrolysis of organic polymer precursors is silicon carbide fibre. This is commonly made from a poly(diorgano)silane precursor, as described in detail by Riedel (1996) and more concisely by Chawla (1998). Silicon nitride fibres are also made by this sort of approach. Much of this work originates in Japan, where Yajima (1976) was a notable pioneer. 

The hoped-for applications of fullerenes have not materialised as yet. A cartoon published in America soon after the discovery shows a hapless hero sinking into a vat full of buckyballs (another name for fullerenes) with their very low friction. It is not known how the hero managed to escape... 

Harris has this to say on the breadth of appeal of nanotubes Carbon nanotubes have captured the imagination of physicists, chemists and materials scientists alike. Physicists have been attracted to their extraordinary electronic properties, chemists to their potential as nanotest-tubes and materials scientists to their amazing stiffness, strength and resilience . 

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