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Light-Producing Nanotubes Could Mean Faster Chips
CannibalBob writes "From PCWorld: Researchers at IBM have used carbon molecules to emit light, a breakthrough that could replace silicon as the foundation of chips and lead to faster computers and telecommunication equipment. This is the first time light has ever been generated from a molecule by applying electricity. Read the article."
This is the first time light has ever been generated from a molecule by applying electricity
I always assumed with enough power ANYTHING could emit light.. if only for a brief time
How do light bulbs work? True, they burn as a side effect of being heated, but you apply electricity, and you [eventually] get light. Then there's the the whole laser thing... Florcent tubes?
Wouldn't ignorant jackholes who read too many bad sci-fi novels like Bill Joy worry about these "Nanotubes" going haywire and turning the planet to gray goo? Or would Apple sue them into oblivion for using "Carbon" in a computer without their express permission?
Despite millions of years of evolution, human beings, taken as a group, are still stupid, panicky animals.
>This is the first time light has ever been generated from a molecule by applying electricity.
Heck, if you put too much lighter fuel on the charcoal and apply your electric grill lighter while standing too close you'll see PLENTY of light from those charcoal molecules!
...and lead to faster computers and telecommunication equipment.
Doesn't it seem like this catch-phrase is tacked onto every new discovery? Couldn't these folks just be making nifty flashlight bulb replacements? Does EVERYTHING need to give us faster computers?
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-A.M.
Pimpin' all the Karma Hoes!
I'm a complete ignorant about these things. But how stable are these systems that work on nano levels? For instance if I would give my computer a hard kick, would it be affected in any way? The energy levels it works on are so low.
Here's the detailed info on all this:
IBM Research Light Emitting Carbon Nanotube news release
There's also an animation, but the pictures in the release are easier to follow.
JS - IBM Metaverse devteam
The opinions expressed here are mine & not necessarily representative of IBM
If they managed to refine this enough, could we be seeing nanotube displays some time in the future? And how would the power drain compare to that of an LCD or OLED display?
would constitute a single molecule. Applying electricity to it, as pointed out in the article, they were able to produce light (1.5 micron). An LED, tungsten wire, or burning lump of coal are not made up of a single molecule, no more so than an ice cube is a single molecule of water. What this constitutes is an engineering first. What is left to be seen is if they can find useful applications and mass produce it.
End of Line.
Yes.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Three days ago
I'm a graduate physics student (experimentalist), and I'll be working with nanotubes. But we're just building up our lab now (my advisor just arrived here only a few months ago). We'll be doing measurements with carbon nanotubes, initially continuing what we did last summer (at her old postdoc lab) by measuring superconducting nanowires. If you're curious, these nanowires are created by sputtering a superconducting alloy (MoGe) on top of a nanotube substrate. They're interesting because the system dimensions are small enough that the wires are effectively one-dimensional, which means they can't support long-range order and thus cannot allow Cooper-pair supercurrents to flow unimpeded through the wire.
It's hard to create nanotubes, and harder to put them where you want them. One way to create them is to use chemical vapor deposition (CVD), where you basically try to create a controlled environment where some hydrocarbon (eg methane) is ignited (the environment is somewhat oxygen-deficient so CO2 isn't the only carbon species produced) The 'soot' that is subsequently deposited on your substrate should contain nanotubes if the right conditions are met.
To get the tubes in certain places, sometimes little 'seeds' of iron particles are used, in hopes the nanotubes will grow/branch from them. It's hard to create good SWNT (Single-Walled Nanotubes), but easier to form 'ropes' of many nanotubes intertwined together.
Another difficult factor to control is the 'chirality' of the tube. Basically, a carbon nanotube is a rolled graphite sheet, but when the sheet is rolled, it can have certain 'twist' to it. For example, if you rolled lined paper into a cylinder, you can have zero helicity, in which case your lines will form independent circles. Or you can shift the lines by an integer number, in which case the lines will form helices of varying pitch. This factor in nanotubes determines the electronic band structure, which mandates whether the tubes are metallic or semiconducting. It would be highly desirable to be able to produce consistently tubes of the same chirality.
I hope this makes sense, I was up all night doing E&M homework (ya gotta love Jackson), so my brain is kinda fried right now.
make world, not war
Thinking about it, would it not be feasible to make them emit harmonics (375nm blue, anyone?) for use in optical storage too?
I'm just a dumb old maths guy, not a physicist, but surely someone can enlighten us?
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
In theatrical lighting, the power stage is separated from the signal side by an optocoupler--which basically ensures that if the power stage leaks 240VAC, it won't travel down the DMX wire and fry everything else.
I wonder if they could use these "lighted" carbon nanotubes to put an optocoupler directly on the IGBT of the dimmer...that, as my coworkers would say, would be "freakin' awesome"!
Q: "Why do sound techs say 'check 1, 2'?"
A: "Cause if they could count any higher they'd be lighting techs."
Doesn't anyone remember this? Nanotubes seem to catch fire when you take pictures of them with a flash camera. How is putting light inside the tube going to take care of this *small* problem?