Nanotube shrink-wrap: A small sample of the carbon-nanotube-coated plastic film that could be used as the see-through electrodes in touch screens, roll-up displays, and thin-film solar cells.
Unidym
Special sheets for bendable displays will soon hit the market.
The first electronic product using carbon nanotubes is slated to hit the market this year. Unidym, a startup based in Menlo Park, CA, plans to start selling rolls of its carbon-nanotube-coated plastic films in the second half of 2009.
The transparent, conductive films could make manufacturing LCD screens faster and cheaper. They could enhance the life of touch panels used in ATM screens and supermarket kiosks. They might also pave the way for flexible thin-film solar cells and bright, roll-up color displays. The displays could be used in cell phones, billboards, and electronic books and magazines.
In all of these applications, the nanotube sheets would replace the indium tin oxide (ITO) coatings that are currently used as transparent electrodes. ITO cracks easily and is a more expensive material. "The cost of indium has gone up by 100 times in the last 10 years," says Peter Harrop, chairman of IDTechEx, a research and consulting firm based in Cambridge, U.K.
Sean Olson, vice president of business development at Unidym, says that touch panels--which are particularly susceptible to the brittleness of ITO--will be the first market that the company will target. He says that Unidym is already working with leading touch-panel makers.
Many display manufacturers are working on products using the new films. In October, Samsung demonstrated the first prototype of a 14.3-inch color electronic paper device made with the films. Earlier last year, at the Society for Information Display symposium, Unidym demonstrated a color LCD prototype in collaboration with Silicon Display Technology, based in Seoul, Korea. Unidym is also working with Japanese chemical company Nippon Kayaku to make thin-film solar cells.
Using nanotube films instead of ITO coatings would bring multiple advantages to display manufacturers. Carbon is a cheap, abundant material. Carbon nanotubes are stronger and more flexible than ITO. Most important, the nanotube films are easier to deposit on plastic and glass substrates.
"The big benefit LCD guys are looking at is not materials cost," Olson says. "It's going from ITO, which [requires] vacuum deposition, to something that is more easily coated." That would increase the company's yields and bring down production costs.
The new film is a tangled mat of carbon nanotubes on plastic. Unidym's method to manufacture nanotubes is a key technology breakthrough. Electronic products with carbon nanotubes have been kept at bay mainly because of the difficulty in making pure batches of high-performance conducting nanotubes at reasonable cost. Batches of the material contain tubes that are both conducting and semiconducting. Nanotubes' properties also depend on other factors, such as length, diameter, and the number of walls that they have.
Researchers develop a new method for making efficient nanotube transistor arrays.
Carbon nanotubes that respond to visible light might mean better solar cells and artificial retinas.
High-quality, clear graphene films are a leap toward bendable OLED displays.
Irecently read about concern in the bicycle building and repair market ie: breathing of dust from cutting carbon fiber and other like composites and how it may act like asbestos permanently scaring the lining of the lung.kinda scary, so much for deregulation GW
Nature produces tons of carbon nanotubes every day when lightning starts a fire nanotubes and soot are formed. When a fireplace is burning wood or a barbeque is buring carbon nanotubes are formed in the air and deposited on the food that you eat which man has been ingesting since the dawn of time. So why are we now having health concerns for carbon nanotubes on humans and the environment ? Maybe there is money in it; that would be the only motivation that I can see. Lets create a human health and safety division within the EPA and pay the people top saleries to insure our safety and lets make the companies and tax payers pay for it all including the travel that produces yet more carbon nanotubes. For the un- informed that think that they know better and have to protect us from the evils of profits that creat jobs and improving the standard of living.
Manufacturing and storage of Carbon Nanotubes based products
I welcome this technology and kudos to its researchers. While research must have no bounds and no restrictions, the application and by-products of the research must be bounded and controlled. One cannot expect the Government to do this since their main motivation is Wealth and Prosperity of the citizens and NOT HEALTH. The Engineering and Medical Groups and Organizations must taken on this responsibility. For instance, does anyone know what happens to the Liver and Kidneys of a person who is continuously breathing in carbon nano tubes that are known carcinogens? Apart from the Lungs getting a good solid coating leading to Lung Cancer, these other vital organs need to filter out the toxic chemicals that are created by combining carbon nano tubes with various other organic compounds that our liver produces. Such research must be initiated before any Carbon Nano Tube based product is pushed into the market.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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stradric
33 Comments
Excited but cautious
While I'm excited that the first carbon nanotube products are just around the corner, it's also a little alarming that they are being released before the health and environmental impacts of carbon nanotube contamination are fully explored.
For example, with this coating, do the nanotubes wear off onto your skin? What happens when you touch your eyes? How long until the bio accumulation of carbon nanotubes causes negative health impacts? How do we address the possibility of carbon nanotube poisoning? These are questions that I think are largely being laid wayside. I certainly don't want to impede progress, but at the same time I don't want us to get in over our heads as we usually do.
Reply
phoenix
172 Comments
Re: Excited but cautious
Just like megacorp ExonMobil, who employed a team of high priced lawyers to fight a class action lawsuit against them in the Supreme Court after destroying an entire ecosystem in Prince William Sound, pharmacorps like GlaxoSmithKline and biotech giants Monsanto and Syngenta, who have mega-millions to throw at lobbying Congress in order to promote their own global industrial agendas, this industry will do everything in its power to thwart any efforts at establishing some meaningful guidelines and restrictions on their products in an effort to make a profit. Your mild missive about being 'excited but cautious' is just the tip of the iceberg. So much environmental damage has been already been done to this planet in the name of capitalism, that if it does somehow manage to survive this full frontal assault on it, the after effects will be so devastating that it will make the term Global Warming seem like a meer euphemism. If you really want to find out just what these guys are capable of, stradric, pick up a copy of 'The Myth of the Good Corporate Citizen' by Murray Dobbin. I rest my case.
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Katherine Bourzac
27 Comments
Re: Excited but cautious
Hi stradric
You might want to read a blog I did about the EPA's regulation of nanomaterials.
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/22494/
According to the EPA, Unidym has volunteered to submit information to the EPA's in-depth monitoring program. However, many public interest groups have raised concerns that the agency is not getting the safety data it needs and that most of the data the EPA does have has not been made public.
The Wilson Center's Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies has a database of products that the companies making them have identified as containing nanomaterials:
http://www.nanotechproject.org/inventories/consumer/
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Anonymous8403
2 Comments
Re: Excited but cautious
I don't believe there is anything to be cautious about with carbon nanotubes. We are carbon based organisms just like everything else so I don't believe carbon would hurt us. Too much of anything is bad, but were talking nanometers here and that is so small I doubt it could effect us at all. I am excited for this new technology that I am sure will change the world for the better
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