Potential applications of Carbon nanotubes
The discovery of fullerenes provided exciting insights into carbon nanostructures and how architectures built from sp2 carbon units based on simple geometrical principles can result in new symmetries and structures that have fascinating and useful properties. Carbon nanotubes (aka CNTs) represent the most striking example. This are made from graphene sheets consisting of a single atomic layer of carbon atoms in a honeycomb framework that can be rolled into a tube measuring about a nanometer, or one billionth of a meter, in diameter. The extreme properties of fullerenes and carbon nanotubes, such as outstanding mechanical, thermal, electronic, and electrical properties, coupled with chemical robustness, have spurred a broad range of three surprising applications based on some of the remarkable materials properties of nanotubes.1 Uses for cleaning polluted water, boosting solar energy storage by a factor of 10,000 and biomedical applications as molecular syringes, probes, and bioelectronic noses will be described.
Scientists found that by using filters made of carbon nanotubes, pollutants could be removed more effectively from contaminated water as compared to common charcoal filters. CNTs have a very large surface area (e.g., 500 m2 per gram of nanotube) that gives them a high capacity to retain pollutants such as water soluble drugs. A team at the University of Vienna found that at concentrations likely to occur in the environment, the tubes removed 13 tested Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) from contaminated water. The results were recently published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. However, there are still many health and environmental questions to answer before such filters find their way into municipal water treatment plants.2
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Whit regard to business of storing solar energy in molecules that change state in response to light could be entirely transformed by carbon nanotubes. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT) have announced a new solar thermal fuel that could store up to 10,000 times more energy than previous systems. The fuel consists of carbon nanotubes modified with azobenzene, a mix that is expected to provide the same energy storage per volume as lithium-ion batteries and can store solar energy almost indefinitely. It can also be recharged by simply exposing it to sunlight – no electricity required. There are some catches, however. The fuel has been studied using computational chemistry but not yet fully tested in the lab, so commercialization is still far off. Another limitation is that to produce electricity would require another conversion step, using thermoelectric devices or producing steam to run a generator.3
Medical researchers are eying carbon nanotubes as well, such as potential needles for injecting drugs or genes into sick cells. Size and shape are only half the reason why. As probes, their physical properties, including their great electrical and thermal conductivity, make them particularly suited for exchanging information between the inside and outside of the cell. Nanotube probes may be used to test for certain substances and test certain processes beyond cell membranes. But that’s just the beginning. A group of researchers is developing a carbon nanotube transistor that can “smell” by integrating a CNT transistor with olfactory receptor proteins taken from mice. The goal of this type of research, Nanowerk reports, is to transfer the sensing properties of biological molecular systems to artificial electronic devices.4
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According to an article and graph published in The New York Times, “About 56 percent of all the energy that is produced in the United States is wasted” (Revkin). With all that energy being wasted, Americans cannot afford to waste much more. There are a number of things a homeowner can do around and to their household to conserve energy and save money at the same time. They can turn off unneeded ...
Finally we say that carbon nanotubes are quickly becoming the building blocks of innovation across most industries for these exceptional properties. Here has described three potential applications that underscore the wide impact of these tiny tubes. The potential of carbon nanotubes to clean polluted water produce results relevant to environmental conditions. Besides, this innovative idea that the energy density can be significantly increased by using carbon nanotubes as nanoscale templates opens up an interesting avenue for tailoring already-known photoactive molecules for solar thermal fuels and storage in general. And finally, the ability to chemically modify the sidewalls of CNTs also leads to biomedical applications such as molecular syringes, probes, and bioelectronic noses. For these surprising applications, CNTs truly bridge the gap between the molecular realm and the macro-world, and are destined to be a star in future technology.
References
[1] Ajayan P. M., Nanotubes from Carbon Chem. Rev., 1999, 99 (7), pp 1787–1800.
[2] Kah M., Zhang X., Jonker T. O. and Hofmann T., Measuring and Modeling Adsorption of PAHs to Carbon Nanotubes Over a Six Order of Magnitude Wide Concentration Rangemann. Environmental Science & Technology, 2011, 45 (14), pp 6011-6017.
[3] Alexie M., Kolpak and Grossman J. C., Azobenzene-Functionalized Carbon Nanotubes As High-Energy Density Solar Thermal Fuels, Nano Lett., 2011, 11 (8), pp 3156–3162.
[4] Goldsmith† B., Mitala J., Castro A., Lernert M., Bayburt T. and Johnson C., Biomimetic Chemical Sensors Using Nanoelectronic Readout of Olfactory Receptor Proteins, ACS Nano, 2011, 5 (7), pp 5408–5416.
