Tag Archives: Masdar Institute of Science and Technology

Memristors at Masdar

The Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; Masdar Institute Wikipedia entry) featured its work with memristors in an Oct. 1, 2017 Masdar Institute press release by Erica Solomon (for anyone who’s interested, I have a simple description of memristors and links to more posts about them after the press release),

Researchers Develop New Memristor Prototype Capable of Performing Complex Operations at High-Speed and Low Power, Could Lead to Advancements in Internet of Things, Portable Healthcare Sensing and other Embedded Technologies

Computer circuits in development at the Khalifa University of Science and Technology could make future computers much more compact, efficient and powerful thanks to advancements being made in memory technologies that combine processing and memory storage functions into one densely packed “memristor.”

Enabling faster, smaller and ultra-low-power computers with memristors could have a big impact on embedded technologies, which enable Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, and portable healthcare sensing systems, says Dr. Baker Mohammad, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Dr. Mohammad co-authored a book on memristor technologies, which has just been released by Springer, a leading global scientific publisher of books and journals, with Class of 2017 PhD graduate Heba Abunahla. The book, titled Memristor Technology: Synthesis and Modeling for Sensing and Security Applications, provides readers with a single-source guide to fabricate, characterize and model memristor devices for sensing applications.

The pair also contributed to a paper on memristor research that was published in IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers earlier this month with Class of 2017 MSc graduate Muath Abu Lebdeh and Dr. Mahmoud Al-Qutayri, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.PhD student Yasmin Halawani is also an active member of Dr. Mohammad’s research team.

Conventional computers rely on energy and time-consuming processes to move information back and forth between the computer central processing unit (CPU) and the memory, which are separately located. A memristor, which is an electrical resistor that remembers how much current flows through it, can bridge the gap between computation and storage. Instead of fetching data from the memory and sending that data to the CPU where it is then processed, memristors have the potential to store and process data simultaneously.

“Memristors allow computers to perform many operations at the same time without having to move data around, thereby reducing latency, energy requirements, costs and chip size,” Dr. Mohammad explained. “We are focused on extending the logic gate design of the current memristor architecture with one that leads to even greater reduction of latency, energy dissipation and size.”

Logic gates control an electronics logical operation on one or more binary inputs and typically produce a single binary output. That is why they are at the heart of what makes a computer work, allowing a CPU to carry out a given set of instructions, which are received as electrical signals, using one or a combination of the seven basic logical operations: AND, OR, NOT, XOR, XNOR, NAND and NOR.

The team’s latest work is aimed at advancing a memristor’s ability to perform a complex logic operation, known as the XNOR (Exclusive NOR) logic gate function, which is the most complex logic gate operation among the seven basic logic gates types.

Designing memristive logic gates is difficult, as they require that each electrical input and output be in the form of electrical resistance rather than electrical voltage.

“However, we were able to successfully design an XNOR logic gate prototype with a novel structure, by layering bipolar and unipolar memristor types in a novel heterogeneous structure, which led to a reduction in latency and energy consumption for a memristive XNOR logic circuit gate by 50% compared to state-of the art state full logic proposed by leading research institutes,” Dr. Mohammad revealed.

The team’s current work builds on five years of research in the field of memristors, which is expected to reach a market value of US$384 million by 2025, according to a recent report from Research and Markets. Up to now, the team has fabricated and characterized several memristor prototypes, assessing how different design structures influence efficiency and inform potential applications. Some innovative memristor technology applications the team discovered include machine vision, radiation sensing and diabetes detection. Two patents have already been issued by the US Patents and Trademark Office (USPTO) for novel memristor designs invented by the team, with two additional patents pending.

Their robust research efforts have also led to the publication of several papers on the technology in high impact journals, including The Journal of Physical Chemistry, Materials Chemistry and Physics, and IEEE TCAS. This strong technology base paved the way for undergraduate senior students Reem Aldahmani, Amani Alshkeili, and Reem Jassem Jaffar to build novel and efficient memristive sensing prototypes.

The memristor research is also set to get an additional boost thanks to the new University merger, which Dr. Mohammad believes could help expedite the team’s research and development efforts through convenient and continuous access to the wider range of specialized facilities and tools the new university has on offer.

The team’s prototype memristors are now in the laboratory prototype stage, and Dr. Mohammad plans to initiate discussions for internal partnership opportunities with the Khalifa University Robotics Institute, followed by external collaboration with leading semiconductor companies such as Abu Dhabi-owned GlobalFoundries, to accelerate the transfer of his team’s technology to the market.

With initial positive findings and the promise of further development through the University’s enhanced portfolio of research facilities, this project is a perfect demonstration of how the Khalifa University of Science and Technology is pushing the envelope of electronics and semiconductor technologies to help transform Abu Dhabi into a high-tech hub for research and entrepreneurship.

h/t Oct. 4, 2017 Nanowerk news item

Slightly restating it from the press release, a memristor is a nanoscale electrical component which mimics neural plasticity. Memristor combines the word ‘memory’ with ‘resistor’.

For those who’d like a little more, there are three components: capacitors, inductors, and resistors which make up an electrical circuit. The resistor is the circuit element which represents the resistance to the flow of electric current.  As for how this relates to the memristor (from the Memristor Wikipedia entry; Note: Links have been removed),

The memristor’s electrical resistance is not constant but depends on the history of current that had previously flowed through the device, i.e., its present resistance depends on how much electric charge has flowed in what direction through it in the past; the device remembers its history — the so-called non-volatility property.[2] When the electric power supply is turned off, the memristor remembers its most recent resistance until it is turned on again

The memristor could lead to more energy-saving devices but much of the current (pun noted) interest lies in its similarity to neural plasticity and its potential application on neuromorphic engineering (brainlike computing).

Here’s a sampling of some of the more recent memristor postings on this blog:

August 24, 2017: Neuristors and brainlike computing

June 28, 2017: Dr. Wei Lu and bio-inspired ‘memristor’ chips

May 2, 2017: Predicting how a memristor functions

December 30, 2016: Changing synaptic connectivity with a memristor

December 5, 2016: The memristor as computing device

November 1, 2016: The memristor as the ‘missing link’ in bioelectronic medicine?

You can find more by using ‘memristor’ as the search term in the blog search function or on the search engine of your choice.

Carbon nanotubes for water desalination

In discussions about water desalination and carbon nanomaterials,  it’s graphene that’s usually mentioned these days. By contrast, scientists from the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have turned to carbon nanotubes,

There are two news items about the work at LLNL on ScienceDaily, this first one originated by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) offers a succinct summary of the work (from an August 24, 2017 news item on ScienceDaily,

At just the right size, carbon nanotubes can filter water with better efficiency than biological proteins, a new study reveals. The results could pave the way to new water filtration systems, at a time when demands for fresh water pose a global threat to sustainable development.

A class of biological proteins, called aquaporins, is able to effectively filter water, yet scientists have not been able to manufacture scalable systems that mimic this ability. Aquaporins usually exhibit channels for filtering water molecules at a narrow width of 0.3 nanometers, which forces the water molecules into a single-file chain.

Here, Ramya H. Tunuguntla and colleagues experimented with nanotubes of different widths to see which ones are best for filtering water. Intriguingly, they found that carbon nanotubes with a width of 0.8 nanometers outperformed aquaporins in filtering efficiency by a factor of six.

These narrow carbon nanotube porins (nCNTPs) were still slim enough to force the water molecules into a single-file chain. The researchers attribute the differences between aquaporins and nCNTPS to differences in hydrogen bonding — whereas pore-lining residues in aquaporins can donate or accept H bonds to incoming water molecules, the walls of CNTPs cannot form H bonds, permitting unimpeded water flow.

The nCNTPs in this study maintained permeability exceeding that of typical saltwater, only diminishing at very high salt concentrations. Lastly, the team found that by changing the charges at the mouth of the nanotube, they can alter the ion selectivity. This advancement is highlighted in a Perspective [in Science magazine] by Zuzanna Siwy and Francesco Fornasiero.

The second Aug. 24, 2017 news item on ScienceDaily offers a more technical  perspective,

Lawrence Livermore scientists, in collaboration with researchers at Northeastern University, have developed carbon nanotube pores that can exclude salt from seawater. The team also found that water permeability in carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with diameters smaller than a nanometer (0.8 nm) exceeds that of wider carbon nanotubes by an order of magnitude.

The nanotubes, hollow structures made of carbon atoms in a unique arrangement, are more than 50,000 times thinner than a human hair. The super smooth inner surface of the nanotube is responsible for their remarkably high water permeability, while the tiny pore size blocks larger salt ions.

There’s a rather lovely illustration for this work,

An artist’s depiction of the promise of carbon nanotube porins for desalination. The image depicts a stylized carbon nanotube pipe that delivers clean desalinated water from the ocean to a kitchen tap. Image by Ryan Chen/LLNL

An Aug. 24, 2017 LLNL news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the second news item, proceeds

Increasing demands for fresh water pose a global threat to sustainable development, resulting in water scarcity for 4 billion people. Current water purification technologies can benefit from the development of membranes with specialized pores that mimic highly efficient and water selective biological proteins.

“We found that carbon nanotubes with diameters smaller than a nanometer bear a key structural feature that enables enhanced transport. The narrow hydrophobic channel forces water to translocate in a single-file arrangement, a phenomenon similar to that found in the most efficient biological water transporters,” said Ramya Tunuguntla, an LLNL postdoctoral researcher and co-author of the manuscript appearing in the Aug. 24 [2017]edition of Science.

Computer simulations and experimental studies of water transport through CNTs with diameters larger than 1 nm showed enhanced water flow, but did not match the transport efficiency of biological proteins and did not separate salt efficiently, especially at higher salinities. The key breakthrough achieved by the LLNL team was to use smaller-diameter nanotubes that delivered the required boost in performance.

“These studies revealed the details of the water transport mechanism and showed that rational manipulation of these parameters can enhance pore efficiency,” said Meni Wanunu, a physics professor at Northeastern University and co-author on the study.

“Carbon nanotubes are a unique platform for studying molecular transport and nanofluidics,” said Alex Noy, LLNL principal investigator on the CNT project and a senior author on the paper. “Their sub-nanometer size, atomically smooth surfaces and similarity to cellular water transport channels make them exceptionally suited for this purpose, and it is very exciting to make a synthetic water channel that performs better than nature’s own.”

This discovery by the LLNL scientists and their colleagues has clear implications for the next generation of water purification technologies and will spur a renewed interest in development of the next generation of high-flux membranes.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Enhanced water permeability and tunable ion selectivity in subnanometer carbon nanotube porins by Ramya H. Tunuguntla, Robert Y. Henley, Yun-Chiao Yao, Tuan Anh Pham, Meni Wanunu, Aleksandr Noy. Science 25 Aug 2017: Vol. 357, Issue 6353, pp. 792-796 DOI: 10.1126/science.aan2438

This paper is behind a paywall.

And, Northeastern University issued an August 25, 2017 news release (also on EurekAlert) by Allie Nicodemo,

Earth is 70 percent water, but only a tiny portion—0.007 percent—is available to drink.

As potable water sources dwindle, global population increases every year. One potential solution to quenching the planet’s thirst is through desalinization—the process of removing salt from seawater. While tantalizing, this approach has always been too expensive and energy intensive for large-scale feasibility.

Now, researchers from Northeastern have made a discovery that could change that, making desalinization easier, faster and cheaper than ever before. In a paper published Thursday [August 24, 2017] in Science, the group describes how carbon nanotubes of a certain size act as the perfect filter for salt—the smallest and most abundant water contaminant.

Filtering water is tricky because water molecules want to stick together. The “H” in H2O is hydrogen, and hydrogen bonds are strong, requiring a lot of energy to separate. Water tends to bulk up and resist being filtered. But nanotubes do it rapidly, with ease.

A carbon nanotube is like an impossibly small rolled up sheet of paper, about a nanometer in diameter. For comparison, the diameter of a human hair is 50 to 70 micrometers—50,000 times wider. The tube’s miniscule size, exactly 0.8 nm, only allows one water molecule to pass through at a time. This single-file lineup disrupts the hydrogen bonds, so water can be pushed through the tubes at an accelerated pace, with no bulking.

“You can imagine if you’re a group of people trying to run through the hallway holding hands, it’s going to be a lot slower than running through the hallway single-file,” said co-author Meni Wanunu, associate professor of physics at Northeastern. Wanunu and post doctoral student Robert Henley collaborated with scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California to conduct the research.

Scientists led by Aleksandr Noy at Lawrence Livermore discovered last year [2016] that carbon nanotubes were an ideal channel for proton transport. For this new study, Henley brought expertise and technology from Wanunu’s Nanoscale Biophysics Lab to Noy’s lab, and together they took the research one step further.

In addition to being precisely the right size for passing single water molecules, carbon nanotubes have a negative electric charge. This causes them to reject anything with the same charge, like the negative ions in salt, as well as other unwanted particles.

“While salt has a hard time passing through because of the charge, water is a neutral molecule and passes through easily,” Wanunu said. Scientists in Noy’s lab had theorized that carbon nanotubes could be designed for specific ion selectivity, but they didn’t have a reliable system of measurement. Luckily, “That’s the bread and butter of what we do in Meni’s lab,” Henley said. “It created a nice symbiotic relationship.”

“Robert brought the cutting-edge measurement and design capabilities of Wanunu’s group to my lab, and he was indispensable in developing a new platform that we used to measure the ion selectivity of the nanotubes,” Noy said.

The result is a novel system that could have major implications for the future of water security. The study showed that carbon nanotubes are better at desalinization than any other existing method— natural or man-made.

To keep their momentum going, the two labs have partnered with a leading water purification organization based in Israel. And the group was recently awarded a National Science Foundation/Binational Science Foundation grant to conduct further studies and develop water filtration platforms based on their new method. As they continue the research, the researchers hope to start programs where students can learn the latest on water filtration technology—with the goal of increasing that 0.007 percent.

As is usual in these cases there’s a fair degree of repetition but there’s always at least one nugget of new information, in this case, a link to Israel. As I noted many times, the Middle East is experiencing serious water issues. My most recent ‘water and the Middle East’ piece is an August 21, 2017 post about rainmaking at the Masdar Institute in United Arab Emirates. Approximately 50% of the way down the posting, I mention Israel and Palestine’s conflict over water.

Masdar Institute and rainmaking

Water security, of course, is a key issue and of particular concern in many parts of the world including the Middle East. (In the Pacific Northwest, an area described as a temperate rain forest, there tends to be less awareness but even we are sometimes forced to ration water.) According to a July 5, 2017 posting by Bhok Thompson (on the Green Prophet website) scientists at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates [UA]E) have applied for a patent on a new technique for rainmaking,

Umbrella sales in the UAE may soon see a surge in pricing. Researchers at the Masdar Institute have filed for a provisional patent with the United States Patent and Trademark Office for their discovery – and innovative cloud seeding material that moves them closer to their goal of producing rain on demand. It appears to be a more practical approach than building artificial mountains.

Dr. Linda Zou is leading the project. A professor of chemical and environmental engineering, she is one of the first scientists to explore nanotechnology to enhance a cloud seeding material’s ability to produce rain. By filing a patent, the team is paving a way to commercialize their discovery, and aligning with Masdar Institute’s aim to position the UAE as a world leader in science and tech, specifically in the realm of environmental sustainability.

A January 31, 2017 posting by Erica Solomon for the Masdar Institute reveals more about the project,

The Masdar Institute research team that was one of the inaugural recipients of the US$ 5 million grant from the UAE Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science last year has made significant progress in their work as evidenced by the filing a provisional patent with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

By filing a patent on their innovative cloud seeding material, the research team is bringing the material in the pathway for commercialization, thereby supporting Masdar Institute’s goal of bolstering the United Arab Emirates’ local intellectual property, which is a key measure of the country’s innovation drive. It also signifies a milestone towards achieving greater water security in the UAE, as rainfall enhancement via cloud seeding can potentially increase rainfall between 10% to 30%, helping to refresh groundwater reserves, boost agricultural production, and reduce the country’s heavy reliance on freshwater produced by energy-intensive seawater desalination.

Masdar Institute Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Dr. Linda Zou, is the principal investigator of this research project, and one of the first scientists in the world to explore the use of nanotechnology to enhance a cloud seeding material’s ability to produce rain.

“Using nanotechnology to accelerate water droplet formation on a typical cloud seeding material has never been researched before. It is a new approach that could revolutionize the development of cloud seeding materials and make them significantly more efficient and effective,” Dr. Zou remarked.

Conventional cloud seeding materials are small particles such as pure salt crystals, dry ice and silver iodide. These tiny particles, which are a few microns (one-thousandth of a millimeter) in size, act as the core around which water condenses in the clouds, stimulating water droplet growth. Once the air in the cloud reaches a certain level of saturation, it can no longer hold in that moisture, and rain falls. Cloud seeding essentially mimics what naturally occurs in clouds, but enhances the process by adding particles that can stimulate and accelerate the condensation process.

Dr. Zou and her collaborators, Dr. Mustapha Jouiad, Principal Research Scientist in Mechanical and Materials Engineering Department, postdoctoral researcher Dr. Nabil El Hadri and PhD student Haoran Liang, explored ways to improve the process of condensation on a pure salt crystal by layering it with a thin coating of titanium dioxide.

The extremely thin coating measures around 50 nanometers, which is more than one thousand times thinner than a human hair. Despite the coating’s miniscule size, the titanium dioxide’s effect on the salt’s condensation efficiency is significant. Titanium dioxide is a hydrophilic photocatalyst, which means that when in contact with water vapor in the cloud, it helps to initiate and sustain the water vapor adsorption and condensation on the nanoparticle’s surface. This important property of the cloud seeding material speeds up the formation of large water droplets for rainfall.

Dr. Zou’s team found that the titanium dioxide coating improved the salt’s ability to adsorb and condense water vapor over 100 times compared to a pure salt crystal. Such an increase in condensation efficiency could improve a cloud’s ability to produce more precipitation, making rain enhancement operations more efficient and effective. The research will now move to the next stage of simulated cloud and field testing in the future.

Dr. Zou’s research grant covers two more years of research. During this time, her team will continue to study different design concepts and structures for cloud seeding materials inspired by nanotechnology.

To give you a sense of the urgent need for these technologies, here’s the title from my Aug. 24, 2015 posting, The Gaza is running out of water by 2016 if the United Nations predictions are correct. I’ve not come across any updates on the situation in the Gaza Strip but both Israel and Palestine have recently signed a deal concerning water. Dalia Hatuqa’s August 2017 feature on the water deal for Al Jazeera is critical primarily of Israel (as might be expected) but there are one or two subtle criticisms of Palestine too,

Critics have also warned that the plan does not address Israeli restrictions on Palestinian access to water and the development of infrastructure needed to address the water crisis in the occupied West Bank.

Palestinians in the West Bank consume only 70 litres of water per capita per day, well below what the World Health Organization recommends as a minimum (100).

In the most vulnerable communities in Area C – those not connected to the water network – that number further drops to 20, according to EWASH, a coalition of Palestinian and international organisations working on water and sanitation in the Palestinian territories.

The recent bilateral agreement, which does not increase the Palestinians’ quota of water in the Jordan River, makes an untenable situation permanent and guarantees Israel a lion’s share of its water, thus reinforcing the status quo, Buttu [Diana Buttu, a former adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team] said.

“They have moved away from the idea that water is a shared resource and instead adopted the approach that Israel controls and allocates water to Palestinians,” she added. “Israel has been selling water to Palestinians for a long time, but this is enshrining it even further by saying that this is the way to alleviate the water problem.”

Israeli officials say that water problems in the territories could have been addressed had the Palestinians attended the meetings of the joint committee. Palestinians attribute their refusal to conditions set by their counterparts, namely that they must support Israeli settlement water projects for any Palestinian water improvements to be approved.

According to Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon, “There are many things to be done together to upgrade the water infrastructure in the PA. We are talking about old, leaking pipes, and a more rational use of water.” He also pointed to the illegal tapping into pipes, which he maintained Palestinians did because they did not want to pay for water. “This is something we’ve been wanting to do over the years, and the new water agreement is one of the ways to deal with that. The new agreement … is not only about water quotas; it’s also about more coherent and better use of water, in order to address the needs of the Palestinians.”

But water specialists say that the root cause of the problem is not illegal activity, but the unavailability of water resources to Palestinians and the mismanagement and diversion of the Jordan River.

Access to water is gong to be of increasing urgency should temperatures continue to rise as they have. In many parts of the world, potable water is not easy to find and if temperatures continue to rise areas that did have some water security will lose it and the potential for conflict rises hugely. Palestine and Israel may be a harbinger of what’s to come. As for the commodification of water, I have trouble accepting it; I think everyone has a right to water.

A better buckypaper

‘Buckyballs’ is a slang term for buckminster fullerenes, spheres made up of a carbon atoms arranged in hexagons. It’s a tribute of sorts to Buckminster Fuller, an architect, designer, systems theorist and more, who developed a structure known as a geodesic dome which bears a remarkable resemblance to the carbon atom spheres known as buckyballs or buckminster fullerenes or fullerenes or C60 (for a carbon-based fullerene) for short. Carbon nanotubes are sometimes called buckytubes and there is a material known as buckypaper. A Sept. 20, 2016 news item on Nanowerk describes the latest work on buckypaper,

Researchers at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology have developed a novel type of “buckypaper” – a thin film composed of carbon nanotubes – that has better thermal and electrical properties than most types of buckypaper previously developed. Researchers believe the innovative buckypaper could be used to create ultra-lightweight composite materials for numerous aerospace and energy applications, including advanced lightning strike protection on airplanes and more powerful lithium-ion batteries.

Masdar Institute’s Associate Professors of Mechanical and Materials Engineering Dr. Rashid Abu Al-Rub and Dr. Amal Al Ghaferi, along with Post-Doctoral Researcher Dr. Hammad Younes, developed the buckypaper with carbon nanostructures provided by global security, aerospace, and information technology company Lockheed Martin.

A Sept. 20, 2016 Masdar Institute (United Arab Emirates) press release, which originated the news item, describes the research in more detail,

The black, powdery flakes provided by Lockheed Martin’s Applied NanoStructured Solutions (ANS) contain hundreds of carbon nanotubes, which are one-atom thick sheets of graphene rolled into a tube that have extraordinary mechanical, electrical and thermal properties. Lockheed Martin’s carbon nanostructures are unique because the carbon nanotubes within each flake are all properly aligned, making them good conductors of heat and electricity.

“Lockheed Martin’s carbon nanostructures have many potential applications, but in its powdery form, it cannot be used. It has to be fabricated in a way that keeps the unique properties of the carbon nanotube,” explained Dr. Al Ghaferi. “The challenge we faced was to create something useful with the carbon nanotubes without losing any of their unique properties or disturbing the alignment.”

Dr. Younes said: “Each flake is a carbon nanostructure containing many aligned carbon nanotubes. The alignment of the tubes creates a path for conductivity, much like a wire, making the nanostructure an exceptionally good conductor of electricity.”

The Masdar Institute team mixed the carbon nanotubes with a polymer and their resulting buckypaper, which successfully maintained the alignment of the carbon nanotubes, demonstrated high thermal-electrical conductivity and superior mechanical properties.

“We have a secret recipe for self-aligning the carbon nanotubes within the buckypaper. This self-aligning is key in significantly enhancing the electrical, thermal and mechanical properties of our fabricated buckypapers,” explained Dr. Abu Al-Rub.

Despite their microscopic size – a carbon nanotube’s diameter is about 10,000 times smaller than a human hair – carbon nanotubes’ impact on technology has been huge. At the individual tube level, carbon nanotubes are 200 times stronger, five times more elastic, and five times more electrically conductive than steel.

Because of their extraordinary strength, thermal and electrical properties, and miniscule size, carbon nanotubes can be used in a number of applications, including ultra-thin energy storage devices, smaller and more efficient computer chips, photovoltaic solar cells, flexible electronics, cancer detection, and lightning-resistant coatings on airplanes.

According to a report by Global Industry Analysts Inc., the current global market for nanotubes is pegged at roughly US$5 billion and its market share is growing sharply, reflecting the rising sentiment worldwide in carbon nanotubes’ potential as a wonder technology.

Masdar Institute’s efforts to capitalize on this emerging technology have resulted in several cutting-edge carbon nanotube research projects, including an attempt to create carbon nanotube-strengthened concrete, super capacitors that can hold 50 times more charge, and a membrane that can bind organic micro-pollutants.

As the UAE moves towards a clean energy future, innovations in renewable energy storage systems and other sustainable technologies are crucial for the country’s successful transition, and researchers at Masdar Institute believe that carbon nanotubes will play a huge role in achieving energy sustainability.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

Processing and property investigation of high-density carbon nanostructured papers with superior conductive and mechanical properties by Hammad Younesa, Rashid Abu Al-Ruba, Md. Mahfuzur Rahmana, Ahmed Dalaqa, Amal Al Ghaferia, Tushar Shahb. Diamond and Related Materials Volume 68, September 2016, Pages 109–117  DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.diamond.2016.06.016

This paper is behind a paywall.