Slashdot Mirror
New Microscope Shows Nano-Fibre Formation
Freshly Exhumed writes "An article, with mpeg and avi movies, in Chemical and Engineering News describes how researchers from Danish high-tech firm Haldor Topsoe and the Danish Technical University have made a groundbreaking discovery in the field of nano-research. With the help of a specially designed microscope, researchers can now directly observe carbon nano-fibre formation. This is a prelude to actually controlling the growth of the fibres, which up until now has been very problematic. The new microscope's impact is expected to have tremendous significance for the development of future electronic components, energy extraction, and environmental technology."
It has been a long time since 5 meg video files posted on slashdot haven;t been, well, slashdotted. mirror is at this spot.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
Space Elevator - Everything you needed to know
There ya go.
R.A.S.
milli micro nano pico femto
pico (symbol is "p") is 10^-12, or one-thousandth of a nano.
femto (symbol is "f") is 10^-15, or one-millionth of a nano.
atto (symbol is "a") is 10^-18, or one-billionth of a nano (nano means one-billionth, so atto is one billionth of a billionth)
zepto (symbol is "z") is 10^-21, or nano divided by one trillion.
yocto (symbol is "y") is 10^-24, or nano divided by one quadrillion.
Yocto would be one-millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a unit. That's very small.
may be a little off topic, but I feel it is very important.
/. this website. Especially, if you are not really interest in the avi files, don't click them.
The avi files are from http://pubs.acs.org, millions of researchers and professors and students in chemistry related areas arround the world need this web site to read publications from ACS.
So please don't
Thank you.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Not much. Perhaps you recognize these guys?
They're all Danes. Perhaps some interesting companies too:
We're also the worlds largest producer of windmills, I believe? We can do pretty much everything.
I don't know about the pastries. A "Danish" as you know it, is not called a Dasish in Denmark - it's not even believed to be Danish, if I'm not mistaken? :-)
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
The only problem with the one for Mars are the Mars moons. The Martian moons are much closer to Mars than our is, so close in fact that the elevator will have to dodge the moons.
I read that the elevator would have to dodge these moons several times a day. This is all detailed in the Space Elevator Book
Well intended Fun Guy, but unfortunately irrelevant. As indicated by the AC above, images such as these are only possible with a transmission electron microscope or TEM, at least for now and in the foreseeable future. Atomic resolution requires at least 200 kV electron acceleration voltage, immersion type magnetic objective lenses (lenses where the specimen is at the point of maximum magnetic field), and detection of the weakly scattered high energy primary electrons, not the occasional low energy secondary electrons.
The amount of "bounceback" or backscattering - as it's known as in the field - from a few carbon atoms is too small to be of any use and would be completely swamped by the backscattered (and the secondary) electrons from the gazillions of water molecules surrounding the specimen in an ESEM. The specimen has to be in a near perfect vacuum in order to avoid that. Read the second paragraph of your description which explains that the ESEM detects the secondary electrons, not the backscattered primary electrons.
The TEM itself is basically off-the-shelf machinery. Nevertheless only very experienced microscopists can coax such performance from a TEM and then only after countless hours of patient toil. Chapeau from a colleague, guys!