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."

Comments

Filters and Bushings and Brushes, Oh My!

[Frumious Wombat]

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.

Fascinating!

[rbarreira]

From the article:

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! /me imagines videos of small machines destroying viruses :)