Platinum Nanomuscles Developed

An anonymous reader writes "The Institut für Nanotechnologie in Duisburg 'reports in the latest issue of the Journal Science that they have been able to use a tiny electric charge to flex a piece of 'nanoporous' platinum - an artificial sandwich of platinum atoms riddled with tiny holes. Nanomuscles weigh just one gram but can lift 140 grams, and are preferred to electric motors as they are far cheaper to produce: 50 cents each compared to US$300. They also make less noise and operate more smoothly. They could one day replace most small electric motors in toys, cameras and other devices.'"

Comments

OMG!!

[Timesprout]

one medical company is investigating nanomuscles in penile implants.

I dont believe this, now Slashdot is providing spammers with material. What is the world coming to !!

Missing information

[Paddyish]

This could do wonders for many technologies. A 1:140 ratio in lifting is quite amazing. However, I see a couple of issues with large scale applications. I recently attended a seminar in which the speaker talked about how nano technology adheres to a completely different set of physical laws, since atomic attractions and various other forces start to play a huge role as size decreases. That makes development and improvement of the technology clunky and slow, and sometimes forces developers to drop it alltogether due to unforseen hurdles.

What I want to know, is exactly how big and how powerful can these be? The article says it takes 100 volts to make one flex! That puts a damper on building any type of large networks...And what kind of cycle life do they have? If they work for 100 flexes and then break...that's not terribly useful. They have a ways to go, methinks.

Is it just the small caption print on my browser?

[OwnerOfWhinyCat]

Or did it look to anyone else that Dr. Jörg Weissmüller from the Institut für Nanotechnologie in Duisburg bore a remarkable resemblence to Tarzan?

These ones don't need the 100 volts...

[OwnerOfWhinyCat]

That was the previous Nitinol technology.

The real drawback to the old Nickel-Titanium "muscle springs" was their lousy cyclic rate. Even with a fan on it, you couldn't get a spring with a 7 o.z., 1 inch throw to retract the distance it traveled in under 15 seconds. For most apps. this was just too slow. Now with less heat to bleed off and lower voltages, the cyclic rate could become useful. Motors with no brushes or bearings would be awefully useful in scads of gagets.

The application that springs to mind is in solar heating/cooling systems, where valves and pumps under computer control have piles of moving, rubbing parts could be replaced by parts that would work silently, and almost never wear out. Submersible pumps with no seals to erode would be nice too.

Cheap materials

[Drummer_Dan]

Nanomuscles weigh just one gram... are far cheaper to produce: 50 cents.

Last time I checked, platinum costs about $20/gram

Re:Cheap materials

[pseudonymouse]

The article is very brief, and I don't think it's very clear on the science.

an artificial sandwich of platinum atoms riddled with tiny holes.

At first glance it looked like the atoms were supposed to have tiny holes :), but they never give any indication of how big the 'nanoparticles' are or what else besides platinum is in the 'sandwich'. Perhaps they're saying that it's so porous that it's mostly 'gap'?

The German team were able to achieve the same degree of movement as previous nanomuscles but without generating large volumes of heat. This is because their platinum nanoparticles have a much larger surface area that is electro-chemically accessible; this enables the alloy to store a large electric charge and yet only require a few volts to flex.

Maybe I'm just tired, but I don't really follow this. That is, I get the large surface area, but I don't get what exactly is reacting with the surface or what makes the material 'flex'.

Nanomuscles weigh just one gram but can lift 140 grams, and are preferred to electric motors as they are far cheaper to produce: 50 cents each compared to US$300.

For a pricetag of $300, I assume this would be a 'nanotech' electric motor, but are they saying such a motor would also be one gram and lift 140g?

The article refers to the (presumably more thorough :) article in Science magazine: Muscles Made from Metal by Ray H. Baughman, Science 2003 April 11; 300: 268-269, but I couldn't access it.