Nanotube sheets come of age

Clear, conductive sheets produced at high speed

They're soft, strong, and very, very long.

Large, transparent sheets of carbon nanotubes can now be produced at lightning speed. The new technique should allow the nanotubes to be used in commercial devices from heated car windows to flexible television screens.

"Rarely is a processing advance so elegantly simple that rapid commercialization seems possible," says Ray Baughman, a chemist from the University of Texas at Dallas, whose team unveils the ribbon in this week's Science1.
Nanotubes are tiny cylinders of carbon atoms measuring just billionths of a metre across. They are light, strong, and conductive. But for years their promise has outweighed their utility, because the complicated processes involved in making devices from nanotubes were too slow and expensive to be used in large-scale manufacturing.

But now, nanotubes have gone into warp drive. Baughman's team can churn out up to ten metres of nanoribbon every minute, as easily as pulling a strip of sticky tape from a reel (see video ). This ribbon can be up to five centimetres wide, and after a simple wash in ethanol compacts to just 50 nanometres thick, making it 2,000 times thinner than a piece of paper.

The ribbons are transparent, flexible, and conduct electricity. Weight for weight, they are stronger than steel sheets, yet a square kilometre of the material would weigh only 30 kilograms. "This is basically a new material," says Baughman.

Nanoforest

Scientists have been weaving carbon nanotubes into fibres and sheets for several years (see 'Yarn spun from nanotubes' ). But until now, the most common way of making large sheets of nanotubes relied on a labour-intensive technique much the same as that used by the ancient Egyptians to make papyrus. Nanotubes suspended in a solvent were slowly filtered to create a mat, which was then dried and peeled off the filter.

Baughman's team instead start with a 'forest' of half-millimetre-long nanotubes sticking upright on an iron-based platform. Pulling gently from the edge of the forest with an adhesive strip, such as a Post-It note, uproots a row containing millions of nanotubes. As these nanotubes pull out, they tangle with the next row, and so on.

The nanotubes tangle together just enough to keep a ribbon growing, without jumbling up into a huge ball. "They've found the magic spot," says Ian Kinloch, a materials scientist at the University of Cambridge. "A lot of people will now try this out with a Post-It in their own labs." The team says a one-centimetre-long forest of nanotubes can produce three metres of nanoribbon.

The researchers had previously used a similar method to draw strings of nanotubes from a forest2. Getting them to knit into a wider fabric is a bit trickier, but Baughman says that scaling the work up to produce large sheets will now be "easily do-able".

Patent bonanza

Nanotubes are already replacing graphite in certain commercial devices such as batteries. But this technique could now propel many more nanotube products into the marketplace, agrees Kinloch.

The team has already proved the sheets' usefulness in several applications, filing patents as they go. They have sandwiched a nanoribbon between two Plexiglass plates, for example, using the heat of a domestic microwave oven to weld the layers. This forms a transparent, conductive sheet ideal for a heated car window, they say.

And since bending does not change the electrical properties of the nanotubes they could be used to carry current in a 'rollable TV screen', something that has long been promised by nanotechnologists.

"Things move quickly if you can prove that the supply of the material is good," says Baughman.

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050815/full/050815-8.html


Finally we are getting somewhere with Nanotechnology, hopefuly we'll see quick commercialization. We could see products Very soon now that make use of this technology.

This is indeed a good step. I personnally can't wait to see nano tubes used in more technology....

Yeah. We could see applications as early as 2006 and should take off pretty quickly.

This part is amazing: "Weight for weight, they are stronger than steel sheets, yet a square kilometre of the material would weigh only 30 kilograms."

30kg...

now we can have windows made of this stuff, man that would be cool.

~Thanato

I have no doubt that we have finally reached a point where things will now move quite fast.

" Nano shhets are Producable at a rate comparable to commercial wool spinning"

Now I want my bullet proof T-shirts lol
Also roll up computer screens

The possibilities are endless ! and I heard that this tech could be used in F1 racing by next season.

Nanotechnology ‘Coming to F1’

http://www.autoindustry.co.uk/news/industry_news/24-08-05_10

A recent report in the American journal Science says that advances in nanotechnology could lead to its introduction in Formula One in the near future.

Nanotechnology is the science of engineering materials with the properties of strength, lightness and electrical conductivity at the molecular, or nanometer, scale. According to Science the technology could be used to create artificial muscles, superstrong electric cars and wallpaper-thin electronics..

Scientists from the University of Texas and Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization have reported the creation of industry-ready sheets of materials made from nanotubes -tiny carbon tubes with remarkable strength that are only a few times wider than atoms – that can also act as the semiconductors found in modern electronics.

The new material is self-supporting, transparent and stronger than steel or high-strength plastics, the sheets are flexible and can be heated to emit light. In laboratory tests, the sheets demonstrated solar cell capabilities, using sunlight to produce electricity.

One future application that scientists have discussed is the creation of racecars with stronger, lighter bodies that could also serve as batteries. Andrew Barron, a chemist at of Rice University in Houston. TX said, "We could see this on Formula 1 (racing) cars by next season. This is a jumping-off point for a technology a lot of people will pursue."

Didn't think that this new article needed a new topic so here it is:
Carbon Nanotube Bike in the Market

Sunday, March 05, 2006

The 2005 Tour de France saw the first carbon nanotube frame bikes used in competition. Now the same technology is available to consumers with the new BMC SLC01 Pro Machine. The bike’s frame weighs in at 1055 grams, or 2.33 pounds, which is less than the weight of 5 cellphones - that is, until they start making cellphones out of carbon nanotubes too.

This carbon work of art is the brainchild of Easton Composites and Swiss bike manufacturer, BMC. The SLC01 will be seen this year under the legs of Phonak Professional Cycling Team, one of the most visible and highly ranked of the UCI Pro Teams.
The SLC01 is the very first frameset in history to utilize 100% carbon nanotechnology throughout. Even the front and rear dropouts are made of carbon! Easton’s proprietary CNT (carbon nanotechnology) deals with the manipulation of carbon fibers on an atomic scale measured in billionths of a meter (nanometers). Since the weakest areas in a traditional carbon-fiber component are the tiny spaces between the fibers that contain only resin, Easton’s scientists developed an innovative Enhanced Resin System using carbon nanotubes (CNT).

Carbon nanotubes are an array of carbon atoms arranged in a pattern of hexagons and pentagons (similar to the pattern found on soccer balls). These structures can be manufactured in tubular shapes one billionth of a meter in diameter, hence the name nanotube. Carbon nanotubes have been called "the strongest fiber that will ever be made." Nanotubes have strength-to-weight ratio orders of magnitude greater than steel.
A result of this hyper-strong carbon technology is an increased strength to weight ratio which translates to a reduction in required construction materials. Hence, the SLC01 is one of the lightest and strongest framesets available, weighing in at just 1055 grams for a size 51 but with tubular strength 400 times greater than steel!

wow... 400 times stronger than steel! pretty good!

Another amazing advancement in technology. I can't wait till it becomes more wildly used in home-based infrastructure and commercial gadgets.



So a transparent material, that may soon be used in the entertainment industry as television screens - cool. Imagine a home built on this. The entire colour of the room could change in an instant and in a sense the room intself could be a 3D-television