by Rebecca Walker — March 17, 2010—A team of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have discovered a previously unknown phenomenon that can cause powerful waves of energy to shoot through minuscule wires known as carbon nanotubes. The discovery could lead to a new way of producing electricity, the researchers say.
The phenomenon, described as thermopower waves, “opens up a new area of energy research, which is rare,” says Michael Strano, MIT’s Charles and Hilda Roddey Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, who was the senior author of a paper describing the new. The lead author was Wonjoon Choi, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering.
A thermal wave is a moving pulse of heat that travels along a microscopic wire and can drive electrons along, creating an electrical current, the paper explains. The key ingredient in the recipe is carbon nanotubes — submicroscopic hollow tubes made of a lattice of carbon atoms. These tubes, just a few billionths of a meter (nanometers) in diameter, are part of a family of novel carbon molecules, including buckyballs and graphene sheets, that have been the subject of intensive worldwide research over the last two decades.
Because this is such a new discovery, Strano says, it’s hard to predict exactly what the practical applications will be. But he suggests that one possible application would be in enabling new kinds of ultra-small electronic devices — for example, devices the size of grains of rice, perhaps with sensors or treatment devices that could be injected into the body. Or it could lead to “environmental sensors that could be scattered like dust in the air,” he says.
For more information, see the MIT Web site.
