Researchers Grow Their Longest Carbon Nanotube Ever by UC research team.Long nanotubes are critical to manufacturers and practitioners in such fields as transportation, defense, safety and medicine. Because of their increased surface area, large nanotube arrays offer improvements in sensors. Larger nanotubes can be “spun” — or suspended in an epoxy-like substrate. In conjunction with First Nano (FN), a division of CVD Equipment Corporation, UC has grown an array on FN’s EasyTube Carbon Nanotube system that is longer than 7 mm.
“The harmonious combination of substrate, alloy catalyst and process conditions was found to consistently produce nanotube arrays more than 7 mm long” says Professor Vesselin Shanov, co-director of Smart Materials Nanotechnology Laboratory at the University of Cincinnati (UC). In recognition for its commitment to nanotechnology education at both the graduate and undergraduate level, UC is ranked #2 in the United States for nanotechnology education by Small Times magazine. “First Nano and UC have collaborated in the past and are planning on future collaboration to scale up production of nanotube arrays for applications that man has only dreamed of, like a super-strong cable for a space elevator and featherweight composite materials for sporting goods, aircraft structures, armor and many more uses.”
Synthesis of Carbon Nanotube Arrays
The breakthroughs at the University of Cincinnati and CVD Equipment Corporation (of Ronkonkoma, New York), have led to the growth of large carbon nanotube arrays. While individual carbon nanotubes are only 20 billionths of a meter in diameter, the array of carbon nanotubes grow as millimeter-long dense forests on centimeter-wide substrates. Years of research by UC’s Shanov, Schulz and students Andrew Gorton and Yun YeoHeung led to the invention of the method for growing the large nanotube arrays. Researchers and engineers at CVD Equipment Corporation developed and built the equipment used to grow the large carbon nanotube arrays.
Let's wait for carbon nanotube radio .Researchers in California succeded in developping the world's first working radio system that receives radio waves wirelessly and converts them to sound signals through a nano-sized detector made of carbon nanotubes.The "carbon nanotube radio" device is thousands of times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. The development marks an important step in the evolution of nano-electronics and could lead to the production of the world's smallest radio, the scientists say.
Peter Burke and Chris Rutherglen developed a carbon nanotube "demodulator" that is capable of translating AM radio waves into sound. In a laboratory demonstration, the researchers incorporated the detector into a complete radio system and used it to successfully transmit classical music wirelessly from an iPod to a speaker several feet away from the music player.
Although other researchers have developed nano-sized radio wave detectors in the past, the current study marks the first time that a nano-sized detector has been demonstrated in an actual working radio system, the scientists say. The study demonstrates the feasibility of making other radio components at the nanoscale in the future and may eventually lead to a "truly integrated nanoscale wireless communications system," they say. Such a device could have numerous industrial, commercial, medical and other applications.
Researchers in California succeded in developping the world's first working radio system that receives radio waves wirelessly and converts them to sound signals through a nano-sized detector made of carbon nanotubes.The "carbon nanotube radio" device is thousands of times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. The development marks an important step in the evolution of nano-electronics and could lead to the production of the world's smallest radio, the scientists say.
Peter Burke and Chris Rutherglen developed a carbon nanotube "demodulator" that is capable of translating AM radio waves into sound. In a laboratory demonstration, the researchers incorporated the detector into a complete radio system and used it to successfully transmit classical music wirelessly from an iPod to a speaker several feet away from the music player.
Although other researchers have developed nano-sized radio wave detectors in the past, the current study marks the first time that a nano-sized detector has been demonstrated in an actual working radio system, the scientists say. The study demonstrates the feasibility of making other radio components at the nanoscale in the future and may eventually lead to a "truly integrated nanoscale wireless communications system," they say. Such a device could have numerous industrial, commercial, medical and other applications.
Carbon nanotubes are ultra-thin fibres of carbon and a nanotechnologist’s dream.Carbon nanotubes, long, thin cylinders of carbon, were discovered in 1991 by S. Iijima.Carbon nanotube (CNT) are allotropes of carbon with a cylindrical nanostructure, configurationally equivalent to two dimensional graphene sheet rolled into a tube.They are made from thin sheets of carbon only one atom thick – known as graphene – rolled into a tube only a few nanometres across. Even the thickest is more than a thousand times thinner than a human hair.
Interest in carbon nanotubes blossomed in the 1990s when they were found to possess impressive characteristics that make them very attractive raw materials for nanotechnology of all kinds.They have unique properties.They are about 1000 times stronger than steel and very good thermal conductors and good electrical conductors.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).
Now you can weigh a single atom ! European researchers have built a new device that can do just that. It may ultimately allow scientists to study the progress of chemical reactions, molecule by molecule.Hakonen is coordinator of the EU-funded CARDEQ project which is exploiting these intriguing materials to build a device sensitive enough to measure the masses of atoms and molecules.
A carbon nanotube is essentially an extremely thin, but stiff, piece of string and, like other strings, it can vibrate. As all guitar players know, heavy strings vibrate more slowly than lighter strings, so if a suspended carbon nanotube is allowed to vibrate at its natural frequency, that frequency will fall if atoms or molecules become attached to it.
It sounds simple and the idea is not new. What is new is the delicate sensing system needed to detect the vibration and measure its frequency. Some nanotubes turn out to be semiconductors, depending on how the graphene sheet is wound, and it is these that offer the solution that CARDEQ has developed.
Members of the consortium have taken the approach of building a semiconducting nanotube into a transistor so that the vibration modulates the current passing through it. “The suspended nanotube is, at the same time, the vibrating element and the readout element of the transistor,” Hakonen explains.
“The idea was to run three different detector plans in parallel and then select the best one,” he says. “Now we are down to two. So we have the single electron transfer concept, which is more sensitive, and the field effect transistor concept, which is faster.”
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