World’s strongest material: Researchers who probed single-atom-thick graphene with a sharp diamond tip found that it’s the strongest material ever tested. The illustration shows the atomic structure of graphene, a mesh of carbon and hydrogen atoms.
Jeffrey Kysar, Columbia University
Stretchable electronics and the strongest material ever were just two achievements of 2008.
Graphene, the material behind one of our 10 emerging technologies of 2008, stayed in the news all year. In July, researchers who poked the single-atom-thick carbon sheets with the tip of an atomic force microscope confirmed that graphene is the strongest material ever tested. But most of the graphene community, including Kostya Novoselov, one of the first to make graphene and one of TR's top 35 innovators under 35 in 2008, is interested in graphene's electrical properties. Last month, two separate groups of researchers reported that they had made fast graphene transistors that could be used for wireless communications. Other researchers addressed the problem of manufacturing graphene. Novoselov and his collaborators originally made the single-atom-thick hydrocarbon sheets by crushing graphite between two layers of tape. But more scalable graphene-manufacturing technologies will be needed for the material to be adopted by the chip industry. One group at the University of California, Los Angeles, developed a simple method for making large sheets of graphene by dissolving graphite in hydrazine.
Nanomedicine and Nanomaterials Safety
Researchers made a number of advances in understanding how to make nanomaterials that take a drug straight to diseased cells in the body, which should improve the efficacy and safety of therapies for cancer and many other diseases. They found that nanoparticles shaped like bacteria did a better job getting inside cells, and developed ways to get drugs to the right subcellular machine. And they made major progress in developing agents to deliver RNA. Delivery has been one of the biggest obstacles to a promising therapeutic technique called RNA interference, which uses strands of RNA to muffle the activity of disease genes. A method for screening large numbers of fatty-molecule carriers allowed the company Alnylam Pharmaceuticals to make carriers for delivering RNA to respiratory cells and other targets in mice.
However, there was some bad news this year about the safety of nanomaterials. Two studies in mice suggested that carbon nanotubes could behave like asbestos in the lungs, causing cancer. Whether the nanotubes can, like asbestos, be easily inhaled is just one of many remaining questions. Nanomaterials are diverse in their chemistry and structure, and it's difficult to make generalizations about their safety. One study this year attempted to address this diversity. Researchers developed a method for screening a diverse group of nanomaterials in large numbers and in many kinds of human cells.
Stretchable, Flexible, Wearable Electronics
Other researchers integrated carbon nanotubes into a number of devices. Researchers in Japan made a stretchy electronic circuit by adding carbon nanotubes to a polymer, creating a material that could be used to make stretchable displays and simple computers that wrap around furniture. In China, researchers made thin, transparent, flexible speakers from carbon nanotubes. And researchers in Illinois made stretchable silicon electrical circuits whose performance equals that of their rigid counterparts.
By coating cotton thread with a mixture of carbon nanotubes and a conductive polymer, researchers in Michigan made fabrics that can perform sophisticated computation and act as wearable biosensors whose sensitivity to biological molecules rivals that of conventional diagnostics.
New materials harnessed hamster power, and researchers made carbon nanotubes practical.
Materials made from nanotubes could lead to conformable computers that stretch around any shape.
Particles the size and shape of bacteria could more effectively deliver medicine to cells.
EBAY Store now selling graphene nanoplatelets
http://stores.ebay.com/Nano-Science-Resources Graphene nanoplatelets are as stiff and strong as carbon nanotubes ( 1 TeraPascal tensile strength) but they are shaped like flat plates of ultra thin graphite. These nanoplatelets have 25 micron diameter and 5-10 nanometer thickness. They can be used to improve the properties of a wide range of polymeric materials, including thermoplastic and thermoset composites, natural or synthetic rubber, thermoplastic elastomers, adhesives, paints and coatings. They blend easily with monomers and polymers. They been found to: Increase electrical conductivity, increase thermal conductivity and thermal stability. They improve barrier properties, permit reduced component weight. They increase stiffness, increase toughness (impact strength), improve appearance, including scratch resistance and they have flame retardant properties. They are under research as a result of their novel properties; The have been used to make transparent electrically conductive coatings on solar cells, nano transistors that withstand much more heat than silicon transistors, materials to store hydrogen in fuel cell vehicles, anodes in lithium ion batteries and thousands of other possible uses. They can add strength and impact resistance to model rockets, boats and airplanes when they are mixed into airplane glue.
- $40.00 per gram. Contact for bulk discounts.
http://stores.ebay.com/Nano-Science-Resources
Re: EBAY Store now selling graphene nanoplatelets
If anyone was considering buying these "nanoplatelets", they would be wise to do a little web search on protn7. Look for Neil Farbstein, or Vulvox. Be warned, don't drink while you do this, or you may choke laughing
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.
National Instruments has gathered customer information and data regarding some of the cost differences between building a custom solution versus using NI off-the-shelf tools. Using this data, we built the Graphical System Design ‘Build vs. Buy’ Calculator. The calculator can help show the financial differences between building a custom solution versus buying an off-the-shelf system. This paper discusses the benefits and drawbacks of both a traditional custom design approach and off-the-shelf embedded tools.
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337 Comments
Looks like lots of uses for this
material, esp when it gets cheaper in mass production. One obvious one is add it to concrete? They'd have to research what shapes cut pieces of graphene or what size carbon nanotubes gives concrete specific properties, but looks like could increase strength drastically. If this becomes widespread, would sequester a good chunk of carbon.
And how about tailored multi-layers? Should be even stronger than carbon fiber sheets now in use. Then we'd feel comfortable using this as our primary light weight and incredibly strong building material.
How about 'growing' buildings with a bio-reactor 'cap' similar to self-raising forms in use now for concrete, that rise on hydraulic jacks after the concrete pours.
The bio-reactor cap would substitute for the concrete pour, with a suitable carbon solution piped in. Perhaps even via tubes built into the structure that when done could be used as pipes.
The bio-cap would add new structure to the top of columns and structures like the growing tips of plants. They can grow up, sideways, split into new growing tips with branches and buds.
Nature provides TONS of different templates that large structures could grow to. If you leave off the leaves, assuming you wouldn't want to put solar collectors where the 'leaves' would be, then you'd want to look at leafless desert plants.
You could grow round buildings like barrel cactus - similar to those concrete domes created with balloons that are becoming popular, columnar like saguaro - equivalent to skyscrapers, or clumps of smaller columns together like many smaller branching cacti, each 'column' would allow one large room per floor, giving each office a 360o view! The possibilities are endless.
The fiber building bio-processes in the human body allow the fiber to be destroyed also. So the building could be removed quickly when you don't need it anymore or recycled into a new structure.
Steel is heavy, expensive to mine and process and spews tons of CO2 into the air for each ton made. There's alot more carbon, and if alot of carbon was used directly in buildings, it would be an increase from the amount used now in the form of lumber. Possibly this process might start with innovators creating 'grown' lumber like we do with recycled plastic lumber now.
Specific increased structural properties would give this an advantage over lumber, in the same way they make bikes out of carbon fiber but not too many out of wood.
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