Plastic typically insulates, protecting you from nervous-system-frying electrocution. But a team of Dutch researchers have discovered that if you mash two types of plastic together just right, they’ll conduct electricity as well as metal and exhibit properties that trump high-tech semiconductors.
Alberto Morpurgo and a team at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands squashed a micrometer of the organic polymer TTF to another micro-layer of a polymer called TCNQ. The two plastics stick together due to van der Waals forces—weak magnetic forces that act on molecules. Both polymers are insulators, but when they’re forced together electricity flows along the junction as well as it flows through metal.
Morpurgo believes that electrons are able to jump between spaces in the TCNQ molecules, allowing current to flow. It’s a new way to channel current and the researchers expect to discover many “interesting electronic properties” as they examine the material further.
The new polymer combo could replace semiconductors in circuitry. (Semiconductors are used to control the flow of electrons and are indispensable to modern electronics.) According to researchers, it’s much better at conducting electricity than current semiconductors.
Jochen Mannhart at the University of Augsburg in Germany told NewScientist:
“The electron concentration there is an order of magnitude higher,” he says. “That has the power to create new effects, from magnetism to superconductivity.”
Link to NewScientist article.
A newly designed nanomotor could be used to craft custom molecules one atom at a time, like a molecular ink jet printer. The motor, designed by Colin Lambert and his team at Lancaster University in the UK, would be constructed using three carbon nanotubes—one suspended between two others. A stream of electrons would spin the central tube, like a waterwheel in a river.
Researchers claim they could pump atoms through the central tube, controlling chemical reactions to form exotic molecules with unfathomable properties. The motors could also be tiny, tiny computer components—using the positions of individual atoms within the central tube to represent ones and zeroes. The components would be incredibly dense, about 10 times as small as current processors and memory chips.
Researchers say that the motors should be pretty easy to build.
No news on whether they could be used to build indestructible colonies of nanites that would eventually devour the human race, however.
Link to NewScientist article.
Fuse nanoparticles of cellulose in a tight matrix and you’ll end up with paper that’s tougher than cast iron. Professor Lars Berglund at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology in Stokholm made the discovery while searching for a better use of cellulose, the most abundant plant material on the planet. Currently, most cellulose is used to make paper products or as filler in other materials. It’s the stuff that gives plant cells their structure, long sugar molecules that form durable cell walls.
Processing cellulose usually turns it to mush, which is why your typical strong man can tear a phone book in two without breaking a sweat. Berglund developed a gentle process that uses enzymes and a mechanical beater to ease cellulose molecules out of wood pulp. The pristine cellulose forms extremely strong hydrogen bonds when dried, giving the material a tensile strength of about 214 megapascals. That’s greater than cast iron (130 MPa) and not far off from structural steel (250 MPa). Compare that to run-of-the-mill paper, which has a tensile strength of less than 1 MPa.
No word on potential uses for the material, but it could turn out to be the best renewable building material yet discovered.
Link to NewScientist article.
