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U.S. Scientists Create Nano Brushes
Colin Smith writes "It looks like U.S. scientists are getting good at manipulating buckytubes. 'The world's smallest brushes, with bristles more than a thousand times finer than a human hair, have been created by researchers in the U.S.' This tells me that nanomaterials are moving from science to engineering."
Now I can finally get in between my teeth with my toothbrush.
Real_men_don't_need_spacebars.
Here is an artist rendering of a nanobrush in action. See them working so hard, so you don't have tooooo...!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Imagine the possibilities. Now hard drive manufacturers can paint nano-racing-stripes on their heads for dramatic speed improvement. Now memory manufacturers can paint nano-racing-stripes on their transistors for a dramatic speed improvement. Now toothbrush manufacturers can create a toothbrush so fine we not only brush our own teeth, but the teeth of all bacteria living on them. Everyone should take note: We are living in 1984 -- or was it a Brave New World?
After all, I am strangely colored.
My immediate response is, "nifty".
My more mature, informed, response, is that I'd like to see where the electric motor bushing idea ends up. It's also interesting to see their high surface area to volume being put to use as filter, though it remains to be seen whether they can be made more cost effective than Zeolitic materials
The painting idea is interesting, but from the size of the picture, it doesn't seem that we're looking at single-molecule type resolution in which case conventional lithography is probably superior. On the other hand, I saw a talk by Tom Mallouk of PSU where he demonstrated nanopropulsion with peroxide as fuel, driven by difference in peroxidation rates of different metals on the device. This could be a way of making finely detailed structures of that nature.
Just once, though, I'd like to see a bit less cheekiness in science journalists; nanodustpans, indeed.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
From the article:
/me imagines videos of small machines destroying viruses :)
With appropriate chemical coatings, they might be able to pick out biomolecules such as DNA, specific proteins, or even whole viruses.
Imagine the kind of cures that we'll have in the future!
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Does this mean we'll finally be able to make our Tamiya models look like the picture on the box?
Mattel announces its new line of mono-molecular Barbie and Ken dolls for the 05 Holiday season!
I heard the NPR report (audio only) on Morning Edition yesterday (6/13/05). Unlike the BBC article, the NPR piece focused on one extremely likely use for the nanobrushes: increasing yields in high-density chip fabrication.
.99 and .9999.
As the size of the features etched in silicon decrease, the importance of cleanliness increases. A single mote of dust landing on the chip will cause it to fail, leading to decreased yields as the devices become smaller and more powerful. These nanobrushes may be useful in cleaning out those bits of dust and other debris, turning formerly useless bits of melted sand into high-dollar microprocessors again.
If the little brushes turn out to be mass-producable, you could even see a cost decrease in the end product. Say a clean room has to be 99.9999% dust free (number pulled out of my a^Hhat). This is incredibly difficult when humans are involved, with all our shedding and outgassing and such. But if you can get rid of contaminants by running the wafers through a nanobrush unit, maybe your clean room only has to be 99.99% dust free... and you save whatever the cost difference is between
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.