Honda Says Nano Tech Breakthrough Could Revolutionize Electronics
By John O'Dell October 1, 2009Research Could Lead to Better Electrical Storage for Hybrids, EVs, and Much More
Microscopic carbon nanotubes may have the potential to transport electricity faster and over greater distances with minimal loss of energy, according to Honda Research Institute USA. In this image, the 10 tubes grown on red. pink or peach-colored substrata have metallic conductive properties while the one growing on a blue substrate has semiconducting properties and could not be used to replace metallic conductors such as copper. The empty substrata on either side of the center section are particles too small or too large to grow usable nanotubes.
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
By themselves, carbon nanotubes don't do much - don't look like much, either (in fact, you need a pretty powerful electron microscope to see 'em).
But shoot a jolt of electricity into them and it's a new ball game.
They conduct electricity faster, over greater distances and with less energy loss than just about anything else, and they are so small that you can pack an enormous number of them - and an enormous amount of high-efficiency conductivity - into a fairly small package.
Huge application possibilities exist, especially in the search for lighter, cooler-running and more powerful electronics and electrical storage devices for hybrid and electric vehicles.
That's why America Honda Motors is so excited about the announcement today from its R&D unit that researchers there have devised a way to grow carbon nanotubes so that 91 percent of the tubes gown have the necessary metallic properties, nearly double the best efforts of of other research efforts, the company says.
Commercial in Five Years?
A Honda spokesman told Green Car Advisor the research could result in commercial applications for carbon nanotubes in five years or less.
The project was led by Honda Research Institute USA, in Columbus, Ohio, in conjunction with researchers at Purdue University, in Indiana, and the University of Louisville, in Kentucky.
The research, to be published in Friday's edition of Science magazine, opens "new possibilities for miniaturization and energy efficiency, including much more powerful and compact computers, electrodes for supercapacitors, electric cables, batteries, solar cells, fuel cells, artificial muscles, composite material for automobiles and plane, energy storage material and electronics for hybrid vehicles," Honda said in its announcement.
Makes you dizzy just thinking about it.
The reason they can do so much is that the microscopic (100,000 time thinner than a human hair) nanotubes are grown on metal nano particles - nano, by the way, is scientific for really, really small - and assume the form of rolled up honeycomb sheets.
If the bundles of nanotubes pick up metallic conductivity they end up stronger than steel, have better electrical properties than copper, are as efficient as diamond in heat conductivity, and are light as cotton.
Previous research efforts to grow nanotubes with metallic conductivity have shown 25- to 50-percent success rates, Honda says.
The new research, with its 91 percent success rate is the first "that shows we can control fairly systematically whether carbon nanotubes achieve a metallic states," research team leader Dr. Avetik Harutyunyan said in a statement released by Honda.
Research is continuing, he said, aimed at perfecting the ability "to take complete control over grown nanotube configurations to support their real-world application."
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