Scientists develop 'wonder material' carbyne in bulk amounts for the first time

Carbyne has been created before, but only in small, unstable amounts

Carbyne is formed in one-atom thick strings, making it a truly one-dimensional material (DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/AFP/Getty Images)

Scientists have developed a super-strong new 'wonder material' in a stable form for the very first time.

A team of researchers from the University of Vienna, who detailed their findings in the Nature Materials journal, have successfully produced bulk amounts of carbyne in the lab.

Carbyne was first modelled in a computer simulation, by scientists keen to learn more about its unusual properties. The material, made from long chains of carbon atoms, has enormous tensile strength and stiffness. Stretching it can also alter its electrical conductivity, giving it a wide range of uses in electronic devices.

However, even when they manage to create carbyne in real life, scientists (until now) have only ever been able to create an extremely unstable 100-atom long string, at the most.

The Austrian researchers have dramatically improved the process - some of the strings they created were 6,400 atoms long, and could remain stable indefinitely due to the innovative way they were constructed.

The team, using two rolled sheets of graphene, created a tiny double-walled tube. They synthesised the carbyne in the gap between the graphene sheets, which protected the material and kept it stable.

Although the carbyne strings the team has created are longer than ever before, they're still invisible to the naked eye. Much more work will need to be done before the remarkable material becomes usable, and the scientists still don't know whether it will retain its properties while inside the graphene tube.

However, as it says in the study, the team's discovery represents as "elegant forerunner towards the final goal of carbyne's bulk production."