We’ve written about the possibilities that carbon nanotubes can unlock before, and now, an intrepid team of MIT scientists have discovered a never before known phenomenon using the tubes, which are essentially rolled up sheets of graphene. The occurence, which researchers are calling “thermopower waves” causes powerful waves of energy to speed down the tubes. Michael Strano, MIT’s Charles and Hilda Roddey Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering says that the discovery “opens up a new area of energy research, which is rare,” and according to MIT, the new development could pave the road to a totally new way of producing electricity.
If you’ve never heard of carbon nanotubes before, they’re essentially tiny (and we mean submicroscopic) hollow tubes made of an interconnected network of carbon atoms. To come to their discovery, scientists at MIT coated the nanotubes with a reactive fuel and then lit one end, causing a fast-moving thermal wave to speed down the length of the tube. The heat from the fuel rises to a temperature of 3,000 kelvins, and can speed along the tube 10,000 times faster than the normal spread of this chemical reaction. The heat also pushes electrons down the tube which creates a substantial electrical current. Of the breakthrough, Strano says, “lo and behold, we were really surprised by the size of the resulting voltage peak” that propagated along the wire.
The system can output energy (in proportion to its weight) about 100 x greater than an equivalent weight lithium-ion battery. Strano explains that the high power created by the system is due to the fact that the wave appears to be transporting the electrical charge carriers kind of like an ocean wave could pick up and carry debris along its surface.
[...] of researchers at MIT have made a remarkable find in lithium battery technology – by using carbon nanotubes as one of a battery’s electrodes, they can increase the amount of power it can deliver by up to [...]
[...] a compound made out of carbon nanotubes, deionized water, and a chemical surfactant that helps nanotubes disperse in water. The material grants the electrical properties of nanotubes onto substrates [...]