Riddle me this: how is carbon a conductor?


I'm confused....

M. Wolff has a powercords, and now interconnect cables, made with "carbon ribbon". But when I look up the conductivity of carbon, it's a thousandth of silver's. Almost the same delta for copper.

So why use this stuff in the signal path?

It makes no sense to me (other than he also uses silver) that this is a good design call. Is not what one hears with these designs the non-carbon conductor geometry rather than carbon ribbon?

Really, this is not a shot across your bow, Michael (or to any who is satisfied with the product), but an attempt to understand why use such a poor conductor in the signal path?

Curious, 'cause I'm in the market for IC's and power cords, and attempting to understand the product offerings.
mprime

Showing 1 response by gs5556

A few questions for Michael Wolff: from what I understand, the conductive properties of graphite come from the way the carbon elements are arranged. The carbon graphite crystal is a hexagon with only 4 carbon atoms bonded. This leaves one outer ring electron free per atom to bounce around from atom to atom within the entire crystal. This causes the conductivity.
But does not this arrangement depend on the atoms always touching each other? And, wouldn't any stress or movement eventually weaken the material and cause some atoms to lose contact with each other (thus lose conductivity)? What is the life expectancy of your cables and does mechanical motion and normal electrical conduction shorten the life? Thanks for bearing with me.