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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."
I've found growing carbon nanofibers by decomposing hydrocarbon gases on solid catalysts very intriguing. The main problem that they have faced is that it has been very difficult to probe the fundamental steps that drive the growth, in part because of the high temperature and pressure required to sustain the reaction.
It looks like they have somehow found a way around this problem.
The implications for this are amazing. If we had a working space elevator, getting to mars would cost next to nothing, relative to todays costs of breaking low earth orbit.
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
Shouldn't that read "New Nanoscope Shows Nano-Fibre Formation"
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
This is a very small step up the ladder to massproducing nano particles. When you need millions to be produced cheap enough to be profitable for business, a microscope that can see one at a time isnt that helpful, just makes one of the steps in the process a bit cheaper.
Vote for new mod!!! Score:-2,Imbecile
[bigbrother-mode] Forget RFID, what if in say 50 years, every baby gets a little nano-computer implanted that is fed by bio-electricity ? This is some scary shit even though it could have some practical uses. A biomonitor that will give you a signal (on your mobile with wireless technology), location tracing (for if you get lost as a child) [/bigbrother-mode] Still cool tech though :)
This is the sig that says NI (again)
I'm just taking a wild guess with the subject, but does anyone know what comes after nano? Eventually we're going to get there and I wanted to know what the name was, maybe it's something cool like hyper or jigga.
Hammer of Truth
First pastries and bacon, now this. Is there anything the Danish can't do?
Do you have a small nanotube ? Girls laugh at you ? No problem. You can make it grow... Fast.
Your nanotube can grow up to 2-5 inches per month with our 100% natural and patented herbal carbon solution. No surgery needed, no risks. Thousands of happy customers around the globe. Just send me $50.
-
Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
I'm glad I moved my family up here to the hills.
Play American football...
"Until you do what you believe in, how do you know whether you believe in it or not?" -- Leo Tolstoy
It has been a long time since 5 meg video files posted on slashdot haven;t been, well, slashdotted. mirror is at this spot.
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"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.
Not much, but based on personal experience, having sex with more than three supermodels at a time seems just plain impossible.
You're obviously not danish then...
Black holes are where God divided by zero
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.
This type of scanning electron microscopy is fairly new (~10-15 yrs), but it's not a Danish invention... a lot of places make and sell these microscopes. Traditional SEM requires sputter coating your subject with gold or osmium, something really electron dense to get a good conduction and bounceback. You "shine" electrons at your subject, they bounce back, you detect them. All well and good, but the coating process meant some artifacts were introduced, and you killed your subject. The detection had be done under high vacuum, and it had to be dry, so water and air wouldn't scatter the electrons and ruin your imaging.
o scopes/esem/): "When the electron beam (primary electrons) ejects secondary electrons from the surface of the sample, the secondary electrons collide with water molecules, which in turn function as a cascade amplifier, delivering the secondary electron signal to the positively biased gaseous secondary electron detector (GSED). Because they've lost electrons in this exchange, the water molecules are positively ionized, and thus they are forced/attracted toward the specimen (which may be nonconductive and uncoated), serving to neutralize the negative charge produced by the primary electron beam."
Environmental SEM (or "variable pressure" SEM) puts the subject in a chamber that's isolated from the electron emitter/detector by a thin membrane. The separation allows for different pressures and atmospheres around the detector and the subject. From an informative website(http://www.itg.uiuc.edu/ms/equipment/micr
You can take live action shots of wee beasties or watch crystals grow, live, rather than having to take snapshots of stopped processes.
Very cool.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
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
Just don't send us the AVI
What about breaking low Mars orbit? Sending people to Mars is only half the problem. Getting them back is the other half. Sure, Mars is smaller than Earth, but it isn't THAT small. WHat are ya gonna do, send half of NASA to Mars to build a launch pad/control center/space elevator?? Are they gonna live there for a 10 years or whatever while the means of getting home is assembled and tested? Even if you could ship prefabricated facilities, you'd need a lot of equipment/tools. You have all the cost problems all over again (probably worse). SUre, we might have this kind of thing there eventually (like 75 years from now), but not one person can leave Mars until this stuff is in place. They are essentially stranded. Personally, i'd rather be stranded on Gilligan's Island. At least the weather was nice there.
I guess a space elevator would be neat, but come on, get your head out of clouds.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
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!