Items Tagged With Nanotubes

Scientists at the US Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a screening method to examine how newly made nanoparticles interact with human cells following exposure for various times and doses. This has led to the visualisation of how human cells interact with some specific types of carbon nanoparticles. The method is described in a review article on carbon nanoparticle toxicity in a special section of the 23 August 2006, issue of the Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter (doi: 10.1088/0953-8984/18/33/S34) devoted to developments in nanoscience and nanotechnology.

Many of the vaunted applications of carbon nanotubes require the ability to attach these super-tiny cylinders to electrically conductive surfaces, but to date researchers have only been successful in creating high-resistance interfaces between nanotubes and substrates. Now a team from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute reports two new techniques, each following a different approach, for placing carbon nanotube patterns on metal surfaces of just about any shape and size.

Before carbon nanotubes can fulfill their promise as ultrastrong fibres, electrical wires in molecular devices or hydrogen storage components for fuel cells, better methods are needed for purifying raw nanotube materials. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL, Golden, Colo.), have taken a step toward this goal by demonstrating a simple method of cleaning nanotubes by zapping them with carefully calibrated laser pulses.

Researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) have developed an inexpensive solar cell that can be painted or printed on flexible plastic sheets. “The process is simple,” said lead researcher and author Somenath Mitra, PhD, professor and acting chair of NJIT’s Department of Chemistry and Environmental Sciences. “Someday homeowners will even be able to print sheets of these solar cells with inexpensive home-based inkjet printers. Consumers can then slap the finished product on a wall, roof or billboard to create their own power stations.”