Last March, a group of scientists from the prestigious MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) has published an article in the journal Nature Materials in carefully explaining his discovery of wave generation by power plants, have made a carbon nanotube coated fuel these waves can lead through them, generating an avalanche of electrons. This phenomenon was not previously known and could mark a before and after the conception that we have today to produce electricity. The article was signed by eight scientists, although the principal discoverer of this phenomenon is Wonjoon Choi, a doctoral student at MIT. And the project has been funded by the Department of the Air Force Scientific Research (acronym in English AFORSR) and the National Science Foundation (acronym in English NSF) U.S..
We know that carbon nanotubes are important because they possess interesting properties such as its lightness and strength, compared for example with steel, but in this case it is used as physical medium for the transmission and amplification of electric current. Dr. Michael S. Strano, co-author and professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT, explains the effect they have found taking a simile: consider a few light bodies in the sea and are washed by the waves, just as the heat wave, a pulse Heat in motion, pushing the electrons through carbon nanotubes, generating electricity.
In further experiments, the nanotubes were coated with a layer of highly reactive fuel that can produce heat by decomposition. By means of a laser beam, turn on the fuel system at one end of the nanotube and the fuel heat into the interior of individual carbon nanotubes. The heat itself feeds back into the fuel layer and creating a fast-moving thermal wave that is guided by the nanotube. The heat generated is 3,000 degrees Kelvin, with the speed of the ring that generates heat wave 10,000 times greater than the spread of the chemical reaction of fuel only. And is the heat produced by the recombustion it is, which drives the charge carriers, electrons or holes, along the nanotube, creating a major power. Following improvements in the experiment, the system managed to produce energy, which in relation to its weight, is about a hundred times faster than a standard lithium battery. These waves are generated mathematically had already been studied for over a century, but this group was the first to predict that the combustion wave can be guided through the nanotubes and also could produce a considerable power.
In the upper left graduate student Wonjoo Choi and Chemical Engineering Professor Michael S. Strano. To the right inside a virtual representation of a carbon nanotube. In the bottom part of a video that explains the basics of the system that has created this team at MIT.
On the other hand, in their study have found that taking different types of reactive materials (fuel) in the lining of the nanotubes, the meaning of the thermal wave which pushes the electrons or holes changes, so that alternating current would be created. And that it would extend the range of possibilities in the telecommunications sector, and that AC is the basis for radio waves, telephone, etc.. So they will continue working on this research in greater depth as the current system have been carried out, loses too much energy as heat and luz.En As for the applications you may have this discovery, are difficult to predict exactly, but Dr. Strano said that perhaps could help the use of electronic microdevices could maintain the energy stored indefinitely until the time of use, unlike current batteries that leak and its cargo is lost little by little. Because nanotubes are so small, Dr. Strano suggests that they could create a kind of nanotube arrays to provide significant amounts of energy for a macroscopic size devices.
There is no doubt that this new way of using carbon nanotubes to generate electricity opens up new possibilities in many fields of science, such as microelectronics or alternative energy.
