nanotech – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Stories filed under: "nanotech"

DailyDirt: Oil And Water Aren't Supposed To Mix…

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

We’ve previously mentioned an Xprize winner that came up with a better way to clean up an oil spill after the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster. We’ve also seen some patented but somewhat impractical oil-eating bacteria approaches to cleaning up oil spills. If you’ve ever wondered, why don’t they just use magnets? Here you go, three different ways that could help recover oil from a spill on water.

So far, there have been 13 large-scale oil spill disasters across the globe, and clean up technology hasn’t improved that much over the years. Adding magnetic particles (magnetite) to oil spills might help efforts to reclaim the oil and minimize the environmental impact. [url]
Magnetized oil for easier spill clean up has been done by academic researchers at MIT, too. It’s nice to be able to separate oil and water more quickly, but we still haven’t quite found a complete solution for cleaning up wide areas of choppy waters contaminated with varying kinds of hydrocarbons. [url]
Nanosponge materials could help soak up oils in water — and they’re also magnetic. Rice University researchers made these carbon nanotube based materials and tested them under lab conditions, but scaling up the fabrication of these sponges that could work in oceans or other waterways needs more development. [url]

After you’ve finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: bp deepwater horizon disaster, carbon nanotube, magnet, magnetite, nanosponge, nanotech, oil, oil spill, pollution

DailyDirt: Watched Pots Do Boil

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

People often joke about how bad they are at cooking that they can’t even boil water, but the process of boiling water is actually so ubiquitous and important that figuring out how to do it more efficiently is a significant challenge. We’ve mentioned some materials and designs that can help speed up the boiling process before, so here are a couple more cool ways to vaporize liquids.

More efficient fractional distillation can separate alcohol from water using nanoparticles. Dissolved nanoparticles of gold-silica can absorb light and heat up just the surface of a liquid, allowing the more volatile alcohol to vaporize (and avoiding an azeotropic mixture). [url]
Taking advantage of the Leidenfrost effect, steel balls coated with a super-hydrophobic coating can be heated to 400°C and plunged into room temperature water without producing violent boiling bubbles. This discovery could help improve various heat-transfer techniques and make some large industrial processes much safer. [url]
Producing steam using solar energy can be done very quickly using nanoparticles, too. Heating up water to its boiling point is useful for a lot of applications (eg. producing electricity, purifying water, etc), so any tricks to make the process more efficient could have a significant impact on energy usage. [url]

After you’ve finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: azeotrope, boiling, distillation, energy, heat transfer, leidenfrost effect, nanotech, nanotechnology, purification, solar energy, water

DailyDirt: Lots Of Cool Carbon-Based Molecules

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The history of materials once correlated highly with the development of civilization: the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, … the Silicon Age…. However, we seem to have gotten away from huge advances depending on the discovery of new materials. Or maybe we just haven’t discovered how to make the right materials yet (e.g., room temperature superconductors, nanotubes, etc). Here are just a few interesting materials that might change the world (if we can make them).

Diamond nanothread is a stable form of one-dimensional diamond, and it could be a very useful material if we figure out how to make it reliably in large quantities — with just enough defects to prevent it from being too brittle. Graphene is a similar “wonder material” that promises breakthrough properties, if only we could manufacture it correctly. So far, diamond nanothread can only be made a couple of cubic millimeters at a time, but it could someday make ultra-strong materials for space elevator tethers and other applications that currently remain in the realm of science fiction. [url]
The potential of graphene has been held back by the expense of manufacturing it, but that might change in the near future. Researchers claim that large-area graphene sheets can be made about 100 times cheaper than ever before, using commercially-available copper foil. Billions are being spent to crack graphene production issues, so we’re presumably going to see graphene-based products in our lifetimes. [url]
A modified buckminsterfullerene molecule called a “buckybomb” (or dodecanitrofullerene) could be a new class of high energy nanomaterials. This stuff actually needs to be synthesized first to determine if it’s actually as explosive as the simulations predict it will be, but if anyone dares to make this molecule in significant quantities, it could be many orders of magnitude more powerful than TNT. [url]

After you’ve finished checking out those links, check out this holiday gift guide for some awesome deals at the Techdirt deals store.

Filed Under: buckybomb, carbon, diamond nanothread, diamonds, explosives, graphene, materials, nanotech, nanotubes, space elevator, tnt

DailyDirt: Molecular Electronics Isn't Quite Science Fiction

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There’s going to be a point where Moore’s law stops — because the things we build can only get so small before quantum physics starts to really mess with how circuits behave. Still, researchers keep pushing technology to make smaller and smaller devices. Molecular electronics aren’t practical just yet, but the development of nanoscale components isn’t completely ridiculous. Here are just a few examples.

Origami and kirigami (aka origami that allows for cutting) could be useful in designing electronics from sheets of conductive materials like graphene. Flexible and bendable gadgets could be good for wearable or implantable devices, but it might take a while before graphene is ready for consumer electronics. [url]
A single molecule diode made from a single symmetric molecule, an ionic solution and two gold electrodes has set a performance record, beating previous molecule-sized diodes by a factor of 50. Clearly, no one is going to be using this diode outside of a lab, but it could help design better fundamental devices with extremely small dimensions. [url]
A team of scientists has created a field-effect transistor (FET) from a single molecule — but it requires a scanning-tunneling microscope (STM) to function. This isn’t the first single molecule transistor, and it probably won’t be the last. However, it’s still going to be tricky to find a way to make these nanoscale components useful for practical purposes. [url]

After you’ve finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: diode, graphene, kirigami, materials, molecular electronics, moore's law, nanotech, nanotechnology, origami, predictions, stm, transistor

DailyDirt: Boiling Water More Efficiently

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Boiling water might sound like a common and easy thing to do, but precisely because it’s such a ubiquitous activity, if we can make it more efficient, we can save a sizable amount of energy. Maybe you’ve tried not watching a kettle to see if it boils faster, but far more serious efforts are making progress on more efficient boiling. Cookware isn’t the only application that could benefit from more efficient thermal transfer. Check out these examples of making hot water using less energy.

The “Flare Pan” is a pot design that claims to heat up faster and use 40% less energy than conventional cookware. The bottom of this pot has fins to help distribute heat, making it heat up more quickly and efficiently — and only being slightly more difficult to clean. [url]
A copper surface covered in copper nanorods can increase the energy efficiency of bringing water to a boil by an order of magnitude. The nanoscale and microscale textures encourage nanobubbles and jump-start the boiling process. [url]
Nanostructures made from metal-coated viruses create the right textures on a surface to boil water three times faster. This kind of surface probably won’t be sold in cookware, but it could make power plants more efficient in the future. [url]

After you’ve finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: boiling, cookware, energy, flare pan, heat transfer, nanorods, nanotech, nanotechnology, phase change, water

DailyDirt: Wearables That Actually Do Stuff

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Lately, it seems like a variety of gadgets are vying to be worn — smartwatches, smartglasses, and a bunch of other trinkets that claim to be smart and try to be accessories to your accessories. Before this new wearables trend, textile researchers have been (and still are) working on embedding various functions directly into clothing. The trick is making clothing that can do other stuff without taking away any features of traditional clothing — like being able to machine wash and dry them. Here are just a few links on smart textiles that might make for better wearable items.

Nanotechnology clothing promised a lot of nifty capabilities, and this project is making good on creating a super-insulating fabric that can reflect about 90% of a person’s body heat back to the wearer. Sure, you could wear a mylar suit to get the same effect, but this fabric won’t trap all your sweat like wearing a plastic bag. This fabric is coated in silver nanowire (AgNW) that is durable in a washing machine, and hopefully we’ll figure out how to make it into clothing that doesn’t look like a Starfleet uniform. [url]
Smart socks! Yes, socks with sensors in them that connect to an app on your phone to tell you if your foot is hitting the pavement in a way that might lead to injury. This sounds pretty targeted to dedicated runners, but it’s nice to see a smart wearable that isn’t so obvious when worn. [url]
Fabrics knitted with conductive fibers are becoming more practical and durable — and bulletproof? Bulletproof vests with fabric circuit boards are just one possible application for textiles with embedded electronics. (There are also Wimbledon ball boys/girls wearing smartshirts already.) [url]