With all of the technology that is being continuously introduced and used, it would only seem logical in our quest for a green world to apply some of the renewable energy efforts to this spectrum. That is exactly what some scientists are looking into with their research on how nanotechnology can be used with lithium batteries.
According to Science News, a report that will be published in International Journal of Nanomanufacturing asserts that “carbon nanotubes can prevent such batteries from losing their charge capacity over time.” The batteries they are speaking of are the lithium-based batteries that are found in commonly used devices such as MP3 players, laptop computers, and cell phones.
As any of us who partake of these various technologies are quite aware of, with continued use, the battery power just seems to lose its life. As the news story reports, elements such as hot and cold temperatures help this reduction process along even more. Scientists have been researching this degradation process for awhile, and have looked into silicon to replace the universally used lithium-ion batteries. However, due to the fast rate that silicon also degrades, they have had to search even further.
This is where nanotechnology comes into play. As Science News states, “Shengyang’s Hui-Ming Cheng and colleagues have turned to carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to help them use silicon (Si) as the battery anode but avoid the problem of large volume change during alloying and de-alloying.” By introducing the carbon nanotubes to the silicon, they seem to be solving some of the problems that previously existed.
The whole process is quite amazing. “The researchers grew carbon nanotubes on the surface of tiny particles of silicon using a technique known as chemical vapor deposition in which a carbon-containing vapor decomposes and then condenses on the surface of the silicon particles forming the nanoscopic tubes. They then coated these particles with carbon released from sugar at a high temperature in a vacuum. A separate batch of silicon particles produced using sugar but without the CNTs was also prepared.”
The scientists used these two diverse batches and compared them. What they found was remarkable – the batch using the carbon produced a discharge capacity twice that of the one which only contained the silicon particles.
There seems to be many reasons that have prompted research into better material used to create batteries. Reports of fires found to be ignited by lithium-ion batteries, although rare, seem to have caused much attention to be placed on safer materials. The general complaint many have regarding the increased reduction of device batteries after continued use is likely another reason that prompted the research. Whatever the likely combination was, this new research could be monumental in how users of technological devices power up their gadgets.
Nanotechnology is not the only material researchers are using in their quest for a better battery, but it does seem to be one of the options that show much promise.
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Help answer the question about carbon nanotubes
How strong exactly are carbon nanotubes?
I don’t mean in terms of obscure units like psi but in terms of concrete examples such as would an inch of solid carbon nanotubes be able to withstand an explosion of a sizable amount of plastic explosives a foot away?
Carbon nanotube (CNT) is a new form of carbon, configurationally equivalent to two dimensional graphene sheet rolled into a tube. It is grown now by several techniques in the laboratory and is just a few nanometers in diameter and several microns long.
CNT can be metallic or semiconducting and offers amazing possibilities to create future nanoelectronics devices, circuits, and computers.
CNT exhibits extraordinary mechanical properties: the Young's modulus is over 1 Tera Pascal. It is stiff as diamond. The estimated tensile strength is 200 Giga Pascal. These properties are ideal for reinforced composites, nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS).
The nanomaterials are harvested by being placed in a liquid solvent, such as ethanol, and blasted with ultrasonic waves to loosen them from the wafer surface. Researchers must then sort through the billions of nanowires or nanotubes to find the few that meet the specifications they need for their sensor applications.
Carbon nanotubes, long, thin cylinders of carbon, were discovered in 1991 by S. Iijima. These are large macromolecules that are unique for their size, shape, and remarkable physical properties. They can be thought of as a sheet of graphite (a hexagonal lattice of carbon) rolled into a cylinder. These intriguing structures have sparked much excitement in the recent years and a large amount of research has been dedicated to their understanding. Currently, the physical properties are still being discovered and disputed. What makes it so difficult is that nanotubes have a very broad range of electonic, thermal, and structural properties that change depending on the different kinds of nanotube (defined by its diameter, length, and chirality, or twist). To make things more interesting, besides having a single cylindrical wall (SWNTs), nanotubes can have multiple walls (MWNTs)–cylinders inside the other cylinders. nanotubes are of great interest because of their remarkable structural, electronic and mechanical properties. They may also lead to rich industrial developments. they also have been used to design and constructed many sensors. in near future NASA is going to use them in space.
of research going on. While they may not be specific to nanotubes, they do pertain to nanotechnology. One example uses nanotechnology circuits and nano-materials to build a sensor to sense pH levels in biological systems.
If nanobots were to exist one day, they would not likely “see” in the traditional meaning. That is, they will not have “eyes” that use visible light to see their surroundings. Instead, they will “see” via sensors that sense their environments, such as the pH level, or glucose level in blood…etc, or sense things in very close proximity, e.g. whether they are touching/attached to a red blood cell, white blood cell, or other cell types. In this regard (sensing as “seeing”), there is a lot
Thus, it is not unreasonable to speculate that nanotubes could be used in body armor to provide better protection due to the nanotube’s great mechanical properties (I don’t know about “deflect” though).
2. Nanotubes current have no known “healing” effects that I am aware of. Thus, I personally find it unlikely that nanotubes will be used as a medical “healer”. However, nanotube may one day be used as electrical components (circuits/batteries/sensors) in medical devices,
Short: the silicon is not there and does not matter
Long: There is no silicon disc in the original scholar paper (reference #1). The nanotubes are grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD, reference #3) on silicon wafers, but are then peeled off (possibly with a razor blade – refs. #2 and #4) as a freestanding film having 0.045% index of reflection. The guys in reference #2 also grew the tubes on metal films and nanoparticles (they originally developed the CVD method to grow carbon nanotubes). Their tubes have slightly different properties, so Ajayan tweaked the process a little bit to get the desired nanotube properties (this is a function of growing conditions). The silicon does not matter.
My research group grows silicon nanowires in a very similar manner (ref. #4, our paper actually cites ref. #1), and there we just have plain covalent bonds attaching the wires to the silicon substrate, the silicon wires grow as a continuation of the substrate crystal lattice, so we get single crystal quality determined by the substrate. I suspect that even though they did not investigate the attachment, they have plain covalent bonds as well.
carbon nano tube is the material. however in the field of state-of-the-art military tech, ceramic plates offer the best protection today from projectile weapons.
in the field of space, aerogel offer the best thermal protection, if someone came after you with a flame thrower
in the field of electronics, a plasma shield or some kind of electromagnetic field can protect your from being seen by electronics, harmed by radiation, and will stop bullets, fire, and other physical harm soon.
so the best shield there is isn't actually a material, but energy.
as for materials, ceramic plates and aerogel will be sufficient to protect you from most hazards.
It's not necessarily something that carbon nanotubes specifically used for, so much as a broad application you can also use carbon nanotubes for. The main way they detect glucose is that you put an enzyme (glucose oxidase) on the surface of an electrode. The enzyme in the presence of glucose will make hydrogen peroxide which your electrode can then reduce. When your electrode reacts with the peroxide, the current flowing can be measured (actually there are a variety of electrical properties you could choose to measure, we'll just use current as an example), and based on a known conversion factor, that current signal can be used to estimate how much glucose is present. Recently carbon nanotubes have been used as a new kind of electrode for this process.
General questions are very welcome.
My personal opinions to your questions (the future is always hard to predict, so I can only offer you my opinion):
1. Search “Super-thin nanotube body armor promises to stop and deflect bullets”. It is an article on nanotubes for body armor applications. While I may not agree with the entire article, I do think that nanotubes have plenty of applications besides electronics.
which may help the body heal (though the nanotube itself does not do the healing directly).
3. This is an interesting idea and perhaps something along these lines can be investigated. While it there are already anti-stick nano coatings today (e.g. teflon in your pots/pans, specially treated windshields…), I do not think they will be used on roads. The main reason is that if rain and water don’t stick to the road, it’s likely your car’s tires won’t either, which is very bad.
Thank you for your opinion. While I will not speculate on this possibility, allow me to provide some related facts:
-nanotubes are one of the strongest materials known, if you normalize to it’s nano size (tensile strength is more than steel & diamonds)
-however, nanotubes in bulk, may or may not be super-strong, depending on how it is woven (or not) into a form of fiber
IBM has a method that tags nanotubes with marker molecules than will then self assemble the nanotubes in a manner similar to a biological process. The markers are then stripped away.
-nanotubes are indeed light-weight given its strength
-nanotubes, mixed in with various materials, have been shown to improve the mechanical properties of those various materials
yes.
and one more ( i couldn’t fit it into the other comment box)
3. Could some solution be mixed into tar, or the blacktop used in roads to make ice and rain “not” stick to it?? therefore eliminating some of the worst driving conditions there are, and as a result less crashes and related deaths occuring.
A carbon nanotube has a tensile strength 50 times that of steel, and a strength-to-weight ratio of over 300 times that of steel.
Things like "withstanding an explosion" have far too many variables to make a worthwhile comparison.
i have heard of people that make nanotube in solution and then applying a weak magnetic force to allow for them to line up and then evaporating the solution. but it depends alot on the substrate you are trying to apply this to and the overall properties you want to see out of the single walled or multi walled carbon nanotube. here is one i found from JACS wesite
J. Phys. Chem. B, 2002, 106 (16), pp 4139–4144
DOI: 10.1021/jp0140872
Publication Date (Web): March 30, 2002
Copyright © 2002 American Chemical Society
Instead, an alternative may be to add something on the road and car tires which help them stick to each other, despite rain/snow. Or, to add something to the road which causes water to have a suppressed freezing point when it’s wetting the road. This will lead to less ice and black ice, which could help improve road conditions. However, all this is just a possibility, and may or may not materialize.