New nanotech fibre: Robust handling, shocking performance

11 Jan 2013

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Rice University's latest nanotechnology breakthrough was more than 10 years in the making, but it still came with a shock. Scientists from Rice, the Dutch firm Teijin Aramid, the US Air Force and Israel's Technion Institute this week unveiled a new carbon nanotube (CNT) fibre that looks and acts like textile thread and conducts electricity and heat like a metal wire.

In this week's issue of Science, the researchers describe an industrially scalable process for making the threadlike fibers, which outperform commercially available high-performance materials in a number of ways.

''We finally have a nanotube fibre with properties that don't exist in any other material,'' said lead researcher Matteo Pasquali, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and chemistry at Rice. ''It looks like black cotton thread but behaves like both metal wires and strong carbon fibers.''

The research team includes academic, government and industrial scientists from Rice; Teijin Aramid's headquarters in Arnhem, the Netherlands; the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel; and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in Dayton, Ohio.
light bulb

This light bulb is powered and held in place by two thin strands of carbon nanotube fibres that look and feel like textile thread. The nanotube fibres conduct heat and electricity as well as metal wires but are stronger and more flexible.

''The new CNT fibers have a thermal conductivity approaching that of the best graphite fibers but with 10 times greater electrical conductivity,'' said study co-author Marcin Otto, business development manager at Teijin Aramid. ''Graphite fibers are also brittle, while the new CNT fibers are as flexible and tough as a textile thread. We expect this combination of properties will lead to new products with unique capabilities for the aerospace, automotive, medical and smart-clothing markets.''

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