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Nanotube Applications Grow And Grow
HobbySpacer writes "Carbon nanotubes are starting to transition from interesting laboratory curiosities into interesting technological applications. These apps include non-volatile RAM, flat screen displays, high strength fabrics, and smart skin for structures in aerospace and elsewhere. Perhaps if The Graduate was being made today, the one word for Benjamin Braddock's future would not be "plastics" but "nanotubes"."
And as far as commercial entities go, don't forget IBM's find back in September of 2002, which was making nanotubes with carbon instead of metal.
What's next? jewelry? pencils? life?
Je t'aime Stéphanie
fishing rods.. what about fishing rods ?!
what on earth would you do with a carbine rifle that small?
i guess even nanites are set to participate in the arms race.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
For me, the best is to come in LCD screens. Faster and cheaper LCD screens, and with better image quality. Now, thats what I call good news.
Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
SciAm has run several articles on nanotubes over the years, several are indexed here, along with more general nanotech articles:
http://www.sciam.com/nanotech_directory.cfm
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
That's all fine and dandy, but a bullet proof piece of clothing 'as light as a t-shirt' wouldn't so squat. Kevlar is a pretty light material too, the reason bullet proof vests are so heavy is because of the large impact absorbing plates. Without some impact absorbance, the bullet would just end up dragging a whole bunch of cloth into the gaping hole in your chest. You have to have something to absorb the kinetic energy; and a t-shirt just doesn't cut it.
Space elevator.
Variable sword.
Shadow-square wire.
Don't write these off as goofy SF ideas. These are well-thought-out designs with only one "If Only". When the final engineering solution for the "if only" part of the design appears (and it will), the prediction is realized.
Ever heard of geostationary satellites?
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
The whole point of the "plastics" line was that plastics represent the artificiality of adult life. If nanotubes are made of carbon, then they're not artificial enough!
Uh, what do you think plastic is made out of? The core of what most people think of as plastic (as opposed to the technical definition which focuses on properties rather then composition) is based on a chain of hydrocarbons, with some impurities.
In fact, what most people call "plastic" are closer to "natural" things then nanotubes; no "natural" lifeform consists of pure carbon, so a carbon + hydrogen mix is closer.
So, personally, I'd say (-1, Tried For Humor But Failed) on your post. >:-P
And remember, plastics are made out of all-natural atoms, so ignore the losers who think natural==good, and use plastic. This message not brought to you by the American Plastics Council, but my wallet wishes it was.
I notice similaraties with Stephenson's 'The Diamond Age'... You say Carbon Nanotube based memory chip... He calls it rod logic, but it's clearly the same thing
Just wait until we get some vacuum-filled buckyballs and some useful nano-power sourde.
The diamond age is about to begin.
From the article: "The ability to place CNTs directly on a substrate while controlling their spacing, size, and length, provides a high quality image with optimized electron emissions, brightness, color purity and resolution for flat panel displays. Other attempts in this field utilize a "paste" or "print" method of applying CNTs, which to date, have not been able to provide the same level of display image quality, or the potential cost savings of Motorola's NED process."
This brings up some interesting ideas !
What happens when the technology for laying the nanotubes onto substrates becomes so good that we
are able to build car frames or house frames from it(think 3D substrates of nanotubes) ?
How about another question , how easy is it for one to recycle this crap.
We already have problems with millions of old junk PC's and monitors, what happens when you have near indestructable nanotube structures ?
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Another potential use for nanotubes are the traces on semiconductors:
I've seen a presentation from Infineon about using carbon nanotubes instead of copper for the vias in copper - time frame for production 3-5 years.
http://www.eurosime.com/bgnd.htm#es03
It seems Nantero has taken a "hint" from IBM by trying to beat them to the punch.
Wired had an article in April of 2000 on a technology called MRAM being developed by Stuart Parkin at IBM. Very interesting stuff, and they had working prototypes before this Nantero thing. From what I can tell, Nantero probably read the same article I did, as the similarities are quite remarkable.
Check it out: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/mram.html
The amusing thing about the plastics mentioning is that it really has come true, as far as market penetration. Almost everything that we deal with is plastic, from the bulk of the styling panels on modern automobiles, to grocery bags, to computer parts. Almost every strap connector is made of plastic, and many ropes are plastic-impregnated for strength and longevity. We ship our food in plastic, we filter our water with it. We contain industrial fluids in it. It's everywhere. It's easy to find devices that are nearly 100% plastic, it's nearly impossible to find something with absolutely no plastic in it whatsoever.
Maybe the Buggles album "Age of Plastic" is fully appropriate by name. Certainly the method I use to play it is plastic...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
The reason that plastics are seen to represent artificiality has nothing to do with their core makeup. It has to do with the fact they are used to replace other materials - in a way that mimics the original material without actually having any of the original material. Examples: faux furs and glasses (both cups and eyeglasses apply here). No matter how close in look and feel a plastic comes to the original material, it is still not really that material - and thus is artificial.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
"Economy of scale: Reduction in cost per unit resulting from increased production, realized through operational efficiencies. Economies of scale can be accomplished because as production increases, the cost of producing each additional unit falls."
Or to put it another way, the prototype of the CPU in your computer probably costed a hell of a lot more than "10 times as much as gold", but you probably didn't pay that much for yours.
It's entirely predictable and unsurprising that some of the possible uses of nanotubes will be designed and sometimes prototyped before nanotubes are available in sufficient quantity, quality, and economy to make those uses widely available. The R&D of cheaper production techniques that feed into (and are fed by) economies of scale wouldn't even begin without speculations and prototypes.