20 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2015 www.vanguardcanada.com
T
TECHNOLOGY
and lots of people around the world are
studying them, however, "in practice,"
Kingston says, "it is hard to make them in
high quality at high quantities so that we
can do macroscopic things with them."
By "macroscopic" Kingston means
practical. He hasn't been able to do any-
thing practical with them. Nor can any-
one else. In fact, BNNTs are so hard to
make, they're worth an absolute fortune.
A quick Google search reveals that a 500
milligram clear plastic container of Boron
Nitride Nanotubes (BNNT P1-Beta) re-
tails for $500 USD. Five hundred milli-
grams of gold at today's price, as a com-
parison, would cost roughly $15. At $1
per milligram, a cube of sugar would cost
$4,000.
In theory, BNNTs could change the
world. In practice, they're useless. At
least, until now.
Kington's attention turns to the mag-
nificent silver contraption idly dominating
three-quarters of the lab. "What we have
developed here," he explains, "is a process
based on plasma. We chose this because,
You'd need a lot more than three guesses to figure out that this machine
produces Boron Nitride Nanotubes.
"With boron nitride nanotubes, you can make
better, lighter, higher-performance transparent
materials for armoured vehicles," Kingston says.
"Now you can have high visibility in vehicles that
offer just as much protection."
