Once upon a time, scientists at Duke University played with a material that might seem like magic to us.
Imagine a roll of chicken wire so small that you can’t see it without a super-powerful microscope.
This isn’t just any wire; it’s made of carbon atoms, arranged in a cylinder so tiny that it opens up a world of possibilities for things like night vision goggles, motion detectors, and even solar cells that work better than the ones we have today.
Carbon nanotubes, the name given to these tiny cylinders, were discovered back in the 1990s.
They’re made from a single sheet of carbon atoms rolled up into a shape like a straw. Carbon is everywhere.
It’s in diamonds, the charcoal we use for barbecues, and even the lead in our pencils. But carbon nanotubes are special. They’re stronger than steel, and yet, they’re so thin that you’d need 50,000 of them stacked to match the thickness of a single human hair.
Not only are they super strong, but they’re also great at moving electricity and heat around. This makes them really exciting for people who want to make electronics that are faster, smaller, and more efficient than what we have now.
For a long time, people have thought about using carbon nanotubes instead of silicon, which is what most of our electronic devices are made of today.
However, making carbon nanotubes that work the way we want them to has been a tough nut to crack. Some of these tubes are like open highways for electrons, which means electricity can flow through them non-stop.
This is great unless you want to use them in electronics where you need to turn the flow of electricity on and off, like how our computers and smartphones work.
Enter Professor Michael Therien and his team from Duke University. They’ve come up with a clever way to take these always-on carbon nanotubes and turn them into something that can be switched on and off, just like a silicon transistor.
They did this by wrapping the nanotubes in a special kind of polymer, which is a material made of long chains of molecules, in a very orderly way. It’s kind of like wrapping a ribbon around a pencil.
What’s cool about this is that the process is reversible. Wrap the nanotube, and it changes its electronic behavior. Unwrap it, and it goes back to its original state.
The team also found that by using different types of polymers, they could fine-tune how these nanotubes behave, making them conduct electricity only under certain conditions.
While the idea of using these modified carbon nanotubes in gadgets and gizmos might seem a bit far off, the potential is huge.
For example, they could help create materials that detect heat in the form of infrared radiation, which means we could see people or vehicles hiding in the dark without using light. Or, they could improve solar cells, making them able to capture more of the sun’s energy than ever before.
The story doesn’t end with just detecting things or capturing sunlight. These tiny carbon tubes, wrapped in their spiral polymers, could one day be at the heart of new kinds of computers and storage devices.
They could use the properties of electrons, not just their presence or absence, to process and store information in ways we’re only beginning to imagine.
So, while the journey from this discovery to everyday technology might be long, the path is lit with the promise of tiny carbon tubes, unlocking a future where the electronics we use are more powerful, efficient, and versatile than we’ve ever dreamed.
The research findings can be found in PNAS.
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