Cheap, mass produced solvent can scalably make Carbon nanotube-based dough

Northwestern University’s Jiaxing Huang is ready to reignite carbon nanotube research. And he’s doing so with a common chemical that was once used in household cleaners. By using an inexpensive, already mass produced, simple solvent called cresol, Huang has discovered a way to make disperse carbon nanotubes at unprecedentedly high concentrations without the need for …

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Proto-molecular nanotechnology – Programmable Molecular Fabrication of trillions of functionalized carbon nanotubes

New York-based Mattershift has managed to create large-scale carbon nanotube (CNT) membranes that are able to combine and separate individual molecules. Mattershift designs and manufactures nanotube membranes for carbon-zero fuels, health and performance optimized air and water, and precision medicine. The startup was founded in 2013 to realize the potential of molecular factories, with the …

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Mass production of new class of carbon nanotube semiconductors is close

University of Waterloo chemists have found a way to simultaneously control the orientation and select the size of single-walled carbon nanotubes deposited on a surface. That means the developers of semiconductors can use carbon as opposed to silicon, which will reduce the size and increase the speed of the devices while improving their battery life. …

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Twisted carbon nanotubes can harvest energy and store 250 watts per kilogram

An international research team led by scientists at The University of Texas at Dallas and Hanyang University in South Korea has developed high-tech yarns that generate electricity when they are stretched or twisted. Researchers describe “twistron” yarns and their possible applications, such as harvesting energy from the motion of ocean waves or from temperature fluctuations. …

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Spiders exposed to water with graphene make triple strength spider silk

A research team, led by Professor Nicola Pugno at the University of Trento, Italy, succeeded in having their spiders produce silk with up to three times the strength and ten times the toughness of the regular material. This could pave the way for a new class of bionicomposites, with a wide variety of uses. Professor …

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Carbon Nanotubes Turn Electrical Current into Light-emitting Quasi-particles

Strong light-matter coupling in these semiconducting tubes may hold the key to electrically pumped lasers Light-matter quasi-partic­les can be generated electrically in semiconducting carbon nanotubes. Material scientists and physicists from Heidelberg University (Germany) and the University of St Andrews (Scotland) used light-emitting and extremely stable transistors to reach strong light-matter coupling and create exciton-polaritons. These …

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New 3-D carbon nanotube chip combines computing and data storage

Instead of relying on silicon-based devices, a new 3D chip uses carbon nanotubes, which are sheets of 2-D graphene formed into nanocylinders, and resistive random-access memory (RRAM) cells, a type of nonvolatile memory that operates by changing the resistance of a solid dielectric material. The researchers integrated over 1 million RRAM cells and 2 million …

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Carbon nanotube reinforce Composites can reduce space vehicle mass by 30%

NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) is keenly interested in nanotechnology – an approach that can reduce the mass and improve the performance of aerospace systems. NASA computer modeling analysis has shown that composites using carbon nanotube reinforcements could lead to a 30 percent reduction in the total mass of a launch vehicle. “No single …

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IBM has made Carbon nanotubes transistors smaller and faster than silicon

IBM scientists have made carbon nanotube transistors smaller and faster silicon transistors. Carbon nanotube transistors have long had the potential to be better than silicon, but this is the first time when that promise has been realized. Now IBM and others will have to scale up superior carbon nanotube devices. IBM scientists have been experimenting …

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Transformer-like Carbon Nanostructure

A recent study, affiliated with UNIST has engineered a new type of carbon nanomaterials, capable of changing shapes and colors depending on the type of solvents used. Such materials have attracted much attention owing to their unique optical properties and structures. In the study, the joint research team, led by Professor Byung Soo kim and …

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New brain implant design is meant to restore vision to the blind

Experiments that let a paralyzed person swig coffee using a robotic arm, or that let blind people “see” spots of light, have proven the huge potential of computers that interface with the brain. But the implanted electrodes used in such trials eventually become useless, as scar tissue forms that degrades their electrical connection to brain …

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