Gizmodo: nanotube

Making Powerful, Lightweight Batteries From Nothing But Nanotube Ink and Paper

Popular Science — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:50:00 EST

Reading the electronic-media narrative as it plays out in many popular tech and news blogs, one would think we are hurtling toward a future where paper is all but unnecessary.

But a new development in battery technology could bring paper right back around to its former place of prominence, using it to power the very digital devices — smartphones, Kindles, laptops, etc. — that are increasingly replacing print.

By coating regular copier paper in ink made of carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires, Stanford researchers have created highly conductive storage devices that can be bent, folded, and wrapped around other surfaces (energy-storing wallpaper, anyone?). The carbon nanotube ink adheres to the surface of the paper just like normal ink would, making paper the ideal vehicle for these thin, lightweight storage devices.

Since earlier research has shown that silicon nanowire batteries can be up to 10 times more powerful than lithium-ion batteries, researchers are hopeful the paper batteries will be able to power everything from automobiles to laptops to phones with smaller, lighter, more powerful and longer-lasting batteries. The method can also create simple supercapacitors with large surface areas that allow rapid energy discharge, a requirement for automobile power sources that lithium-ion batteries have trouble satisfying.

All of that would just be more pie-in-the-sky battery research if it were not for this: the paper battery technology is basically market-ready. That's not to say that researchers won't need some time to iron out the kinks, but power sources based on this technology could be commercialized very soon compared to a lot of the nano-noise circulating in scientific circles. The fact that the process is also very cheap means devices like these could be powering your paper-replacing devices sooner than you think. Get the details straight from Stanford's Yi Cui below. [PhysOrg, Forbes]

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These Carbon Nanotube Muscles Are 30 Times Stronger Than Human Muscles

Brian Lam — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 23:30:59 EDT

These next gen carbon nanotube muscles have "diamond-like" stiffness side to side, but are as flexible as rubber when moved perpendicularly. When voltage is applied to the structures, they contract with a pulling force 30 times the force per unit of human muscles.

They're also quicker. A human's muscle fibers can contract 10% per second, but these can contract 40,000 percent.

I had no idea synthetic muscles materials have come so far. A few years ago, when I was covering JPL's robotic arm wrestling challenge for Wired, the materials had a fraction of the potential of organic muscles. [Wired]

Nanotube Speaker Film: Transparent, Stretchy, Likes Moldovan Pop

John Herrman — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 06:15:26 EST

Scientists at Tsinghua University in Beijing have just perfected a process by which nanotubes can be coaxed to emit sound, allowing for the construction of ultra-thin, transparent, flexible 'speakers', demonstrated above affixed to a waving flag. Unlike normal speakers, which produce sound with direct vibration, these sheets produce sound with wildly fluctuating temperatures that create pressure oscillations in the surrounding air. In other words, these nanotube speakers — in contrast to other forays into flat sound production — don't vibrate at all.

In a second demonstration video, the speaker film is shown being stretched, while the emitted sound remains unperturbed. This could have tremendous ramifications for mobile music devices and phones, but the researchers didn't drop any clues as to when, or even if, this tech could make it to market. [New Scientist via Physorg]

Carbon Nanotube Supercapacitors May Replace Clunky Car Batteries

Kit Eaton — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 09:00:00 EDT

Carbon nanotubes are one of the surprising new carbon supermaterials, and it looks like their application in supercapacitors may have a role in replacing clunky old car battery tech. Scientists at the University of Texas at Dallas have invented a technique to make supercapacitor "paper" made from randomly tangled carbon nanotubes embedded in a polymer. Both chemical batteries and capacitors store electrical charge, in differing ways, but nanotech supercapacitors could store more energy in a smaller space, without the dangers associated with chemical systems. Potentially excellent news given the rise of the hybrid car. Better yet the new technique is "easily scalable for device fabrication on an industrial scale," so it might end up in real products sooner rather than later. [Physorg]

Nanotube Scale Weighs One Atom at a Time

Mark Wilson — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:20:00 EDT

Yesterday we got a peek at the combined power of nanotubes—technology that makes a rope-driven space elevator feasible—but what can just one do on its own? Berkeley researchers have discovered that one nanotube can be used as a tiny platform to determine the mass of a single atom.

When placed on the nanotube, the atom vibrates it á la diving board. This vibration is the key to the atom's mass, but measuring it proved a feat in itself. Researchers realized that by using radio waves they could overcome this obstacle and record the data.

The system could replace the mass spectrometer as the "holy grail" of atomic-level mass measurement tools. [NYTimes via KurzweilAI]

MIT Working on Nanotube Batteries, Could Be a Breakthrough

Charlie White — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 10:42:16 EST

In the search for that holy grail, the everlasting battery, not much has been accomplished over the 200 years since old man Volta rolled out the first crude battery back in the dark ages. Now those whiz kids at MIT are using nanotube structures to create new super batteries by using energy storage doodads called ultracapacitors. These devices do their magic by storing electrical fields at the atomic level. Bear in mind that ultracapacitors are nothing new, but what is new is making them small enough to put into regular-sized batteries. Best of all, the MIT researchers are saying these nanotube batteries can be made using ordinary manufacturing methods. No word on how much more energy storage capacity these whiz-bang batteries will have than the conventional ones we know and love to hate. If these scientists can pull this off, standby world—you're about to be changed forever.

MIT Researchers Fired Up About Battery Alternative [TerraDaily]