Scientists Achieves Major Breakthrough for Carbon Nanotube Materials

Tag : carbon steel

Carbon nanotubes possess a number of qualities – high tensilestrength, high flexibility, high electrical and thermalconductivity, and transparency – which have excited greatinterest in a number of manufacturing industries including theelectronic, automotive, energy and clothing industries.
The flexible carbon nanotubes have been spun into ribbons thatconduct electricity efficiently – and are five times strongerthan steel.
Until now, the application of carbon nanotube technology has beenseverely limited due to the lack of a cost-efficient method ofproducing large sheets of carbon nanotube material.
However – as reported in today’s edition of theprestigious international scientific journal, Science – theUTD/CSIRO team recently demonstrated that synthetically made carbonnanotubes can be commercially manufactured into transparent sheetsthat are stronger than steel sheets of the same weight.
Carbon nanotube materials have a number of potential applicationsin, for example: organic light emitting displays, low-noiseelectronic sensors, artificial muscles, conducting appliquésand broad-band polarized light sources that can be switched in oneten-thousandth of a second.
Starting from chemically grown, self-assembled structures in whichnanotubes are aligned like trees in a forest, the sheets areproduced at up to seven meters per minute. Unlike previous sheetfabrication methods – using dispersions of nanotubes inliquids – this dry-state process produces materials made fromthe ultra-long nanotubes required to optimise their unique set ofproperties.
“Rarely is a processing advance so elegantly simple thatrapid commercialisation seems possible, and rarely does such anadvance so quickly enable diverse applicationdemonstrations”, says Dr Ray H. Baughman of the NanoTechInstitute.
“Synergistic aspects of our nanotube sheet and twisted yarnfabrication technologies will likely help accelerate thecommercialisation of both technologies, and UTD and CSIRO areworking together with companies and government laboratories tobring both technologies to the marketplace.”
Posted September 30th, 2008