Tag Archives: Technion-Israel Institute of Technology Haifa

Detangling carbon nanotubes (CNTs)

An April 27, 2022 news item on ScienceDaily announces research into a solution to a vexing problem associated with the production of carbon nanotubes (CNTs),

Carbon nanotubes that are prone to tangle like spaghetti can use a little special sauce to realize their full potential.

Rice University scientists have come up with just the sauce, an acid-based solvent that simplifies carbon nanotube processing in a way that’s easier to scale up for industrial applications.

The Rice lab of Matteo Pasquali reported in Science Advances on its discovery of a unique combination of acids that helps separate nanotubes in a solution and turn them into films, fibers or other materials with excellent electrical and mechanical properties.

The study co-led by graduate alumnus Robert Headrick and graduate student Steven Williams reports the solvent is compatible with conventional manufacturing processes. That should help it find a place in the production of advanced materials for many applications.

An April 22, 2022 Rice University news release (received via email and also published on April 27, 2022 on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, delves further into how the research has environmental benefits and into its technical aspects (Note Links have been removed),

“There’s a growing realization that it’s probably not a good idea to increase the mining of copper and aluminum and nickel,” said Pasquali, Rice’s A.J. Hartsook Professor and a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, chemistry and materials science and nanoengineering. He is also director of the Rice-based Carbon Hub, which promotes the development of advanced carbon materials to benefit the environment.

“But there is this giant opportunity to use hydrocarbons as our ore,” he said. “In that light, we need to broaden as much as possible the range in which we can use carbon materials, especially where it can displace metals with a product that can be manufactured sustainably from a feedstock like hydrocarbons.” Pasquali noted these manufacturing processes produce clean hydrogen as well.

“Carbon is plentiful, we control the supply chains and we know how to get it out in an environmentally responsible way,” he said.

A better way to process carbon will help. The solvent is based on methanesulfonic (MSA), p-toluenesulfonic (pToS)and oleum acids that, when combined, are less corrosive than those currently used to process nanotubes in a solution. Separating nanotubes (which researchers refer to as dissolving) is a necessary step before they can be extruded through a needle or other device where shear forces help turn them into familiar fibers or sheets. 

Oleum and chlorosulfonic acids have long been used to dissolve nanotubes without modifying their structures, but both are highly corrosive. By combining oleum with two weaker acids, the team developed a broadly applicable process that enables new manufacturing for nanotubes products.

“The oleum surrounds each individual nanotube and gives it a very localized positive charge,” said Headrick, now a research scientist at Shell. “That charge makes them repel each other.”

After detangling, the milder acids further separate the nanotubes. They found MSA is best for fiber spinning and roll-to-roll film production, while pToS, a solid that melts at 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), is particularly useful for 3D printing applications because it allows nanotube solutions to be processed at a moderate temperature and then solidified by cooling.

The researchers used these stable liquid crystalline solutions to make things in both modern and traditional ways, 3D printing carbon nanotube aerogels and silk screen printing patterns onto a variety of surfaces, including glass. 

The solutions also enabled roll-to-roll production of transparent films that can be used as electrodes. “Honestly, it was a little surprising how well that worked,” Headrick said. “It came out pretty flawless on the very first try.”

The researchers noted oleum still requires careful handling, but once diluted with the other acids, the solution is much less aggressive to other materials. 

“The acids we’re using are so much gentler that you can use them with common plastics,” Headrick said. “That opens the door to a lot of materials processing and printing techniques that are already in place in manufacturing facilities. 

“It’s also really important for integrating carbon nanotubes into other devices, depositing them as one step in a device-manufacturing process,” he said.

They reported the less-corrosive solutions did not give off harmful fumes and were easier to clean up after production. MSA and pToS can also be recycled after processing nanotubes, lowering their environmental impact and energy and processing costs.

Williams said the next step is to fine-tune the solvent for applications, and to determine how factors like chirality and size affect nanotube processing. “It’s really important that we have high-quality, clean, large diameter tubes,” he said.

Co-authors of the paper are alumna Lauren Taylor and graduate students Oliver Dewey and Cedric Ginestra of Rice; graduate student Crystal Owens and professors Gareth McKinley and A. John Hart at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; alumna Lucy Liberman, graduate student Asia Matatyaho Ya’akobi and Yeshayahu Talmon, a professor emeritus of chemical engineering, at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel; and Benji Maruyama, autonomous materials lead in the Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory.

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

Versatile acid solvents for pristine carbon nanotube assembly by Robert J. Headrick, Steven M. Williams, Crystal E. Owens, Lauren W. Taylor, Oliver S. Dewey, Cedric J. Ginestra, Lucy Liberman, Asia Matatyaho Ya’akobi, Yeshayahu Talmon, Benji Maruyama, Gareth H. McKinley, A. John Hart, Matteo Pasquali. Science Advances • 27 Apr 2022 • Vol 8, Issue 17 • DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abm3285

This paper is open access.

Discovering why your teeth aren’t perfectly crack-resistant

This helps make your teeth crack-resistant?

Caption: Illustration shows complex biostructure of dentin: the dental tubuli (yellow hollow cylinders, diameters appr. 1 micrometer) are surrounded by layers of mineralized collagen fibers (brown rods). The tiny mineral nanoparticles are embedded in the mesh of collagen fibers and not visible here. Credit: JB Forien @Charité

Caption: Illustration shows complex biostructure of dentin: the dental tubuli (yellow hollow cylinders, diameters appr. 1 micrometer) are surrounded by layers of mineralized collagen fibers (brown rods). The tiny mineral nanoparticles are embedded in the mesh of collagen fibers and not visible here. Credit: JB Forien @Charité

A June 10, 2015 Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin (HZB) press release (also on EurekAlert) explains how the illustration above relates to the research,

Human teeth have to serve for a lifetime, despite being subjected to huge forces. But the high failure resistance of dentin in teeth is not fully understood. An interdisciplinary team led by scientists of Charite Universitaetsmedizin Berlin has now analyzed the complex structure of dentin. At the synchrotron sources BESSY II at HZB, Berlin, Germany, and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility ESRF, Grenoble, France, they could reveal that the mineral particles are precompressed.

The internal stress works against crack propagation and increases resistance of the biostructure.

Engineers use internal stresses to strengthen materials for specific technical purposes. Now it seems that evolution has long ‘known’ about this trick, and has put it to use in our natural teeth. Unlike bones, which are made partly of living cells, human teeth are not able to repair damage. Their bulk is made of dentin, a bonelike material consisting of mineral nanoparticles. These mineral nanoparticles are embedded in collagen protein fibres, with which they are tightly connected. In every tooth, such fibers can be found, and they lie in layers, making teeth tough and damage resistant. Still, it was not well understood, how crack propagation in teeth can be stopped.

The press release goes on to describe the new research and the teams which investigated the role of the mineral nanoparticles with regard to compression and cracking,

Now researchers from Charite Julius-Wolff-Institute, Berlin have been working with partners from Materials Engineering Department of Technische Universitaets Berlin, MPI of Colloids and Interfaces, Potsdam and Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, to examine these biostructures more closely. They performed Micro-beam in-situ stress experiments in the mySpot BESSY facility of HZB, Berlin, Germany and analyzed the local orientation of the mineral nanoparticles using the nano-imaging facility of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France.

When the tiny collagen fibers shrink, the attached mineral particles become increasingly compressed, the science team found out. “Our group was able to use changes in humidity to demonstrate how stress appears in the mineral in the collagen fibers, Dr. Paul Zaslansky from Julius Wolff-Institute of Charite Berlin explains. “The compressed state helps to prevents cracks from developing and we found that compression takes place in such a way that cracks cannot easily reach the tooth inner parts, which could damage the sensitive pulp. In this manner, compression stress helps to prevent cracks from rushing through the tooth.

The scientists also examined what happens if the tight mineral-protein link is destroyed by heating: In that case, dentin in teeth becomes much weaker. We therefore believe that the balance of stresses between the particles and the protein is important for the extended survival of teeth in the mouth, Charite scientist Jean-Baptiste Forien says. Their results may explain why artificial tooth replacements usually do not work as well as healthy teeth do: they are simply too passive, lacking the mechanisms found in the natural tooth structures, and consequently fillings cannot sustain the stresses in the mouth as well as teeth do. “Our results might inspire the development of tougher ceramic structures for tooth repair or replacement, Zaslansky hopes.

Experiments took place as part of the DFG project “Biomimetic Materials Research: Functionality by Hierarchical Structuring of Materials (SPP1420).

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

Compressive Residual Strains in Mineral Nanoparticles as a Possible Origin of Enhanced Crack Resistance in Human Tooth Dentin by Jean-Baptiste Forien, Claudia Fleck, Peter Cloetens, Georg Duda, Peter Fratzl, Emil Zolotoyabko, and Paul Zaslansky. Nano Lett., 2015, 15 (6), pp 3729–3734 DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b00143 Publication Date (Web): May 26, 2015

Copyright © 2015 American Chemical Society

This paper is behind a paywall.

China and Israel make big nanotechnology plans

A recently launched $300M China-Israel project seems to signal a new intimacy in relations between the two countries. From a May 25, 2014 article by Ruthie Blum for Israel21c.org,

The launch of a $300 million joint research project between Tel Aviv University and Tsinghua University in Beijing has the academic communities and political echelons in both countries buzzing.

The opening of the XIN Center was announced at Tel Aviv University in mid-May amid great fanfare. The name is a play on words; “xin” means “new” in Chinese, and in English the “X” coupled with the “in” can stand for cross-innovation, cross-intelligence and/or cross-ingenuity.

The endeavor, to be funded by government and private sources, will initially focus on nanotechnology, with an emphasis on medical and optics applications, and later branch out into fields such as biotech and energy.

So far, nearly a third of the money has been raised for the project, which will involve recruiting research fellows from among the best and brightest of the graduate students of both universities to work in tandem (and fly back and forth) to develop products for eventual commercialization.

To raise the rest of the money, an investment fund is being established by Infinity Group, Israel’s largest investment firm, to seed ventures initiated by XIN fellows.

According to Blum, the deal is the outcome of a trip,

The idea for the ambitious program began inauspiciously, during a trip by Israeli scientists to meet with their counterparts in China.

“The project started bottom-up in Beijing,” said Klafter [TAU President Joseph Klafter]. “We fell in love with one another.”

… language is not the main gap between the Israeli and Chinese students. As both Hanein [Prof. Yael Hanein, head of the Tel Aviv University Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology] and Jining [Tsinghua University President Chen Jining]  pointed out, it is the cultural differences that are the most pronounced – and also a positive contrast that can be mutually beneficial.

“The Israelis are less obedient than the Chinese,” observed Hanein.

“The Israelis challenge authority,” said Jining. “And the Chinese bring harmony. The two groups learn from each other and create a balance.”

Jining added that though Tsinghua University collaborates with other academic institutions around the world, “This is the first that is so in-depth. We see it as a vehicle for nurturing future leaders of innovation – for cultivating and training a new generation of entrepreneurs.”

Israel’s Prime Minister, Binyamin (Benjamin) Netanyahu provides an economic perspective,

“China is Israel’s largest trading partner in Asia and fast becoming perhaps Israel’s largest trading partner, period, as we move into the future,” Netanyahu said during a meeting with Vice Premier Yandong at his office in Jerusalem following the XIN launch in Tel Aviv.

There are more details in a May 20, 2014 article written by Niv Elis & Victoria Kezr for the Jerusalem Post,

The first round, which will focus only on nano-technology, will recruit only seven advanced degree students from Tel Aviv University and 14 in China this summer.

While governments are pitching in some money for the $300m. price tag, the universities will seek private donations for the rest.

Israel’s Infinity group set up $16m. fund, comprising investors from Chinese industries and Tsinghua University alumni to help foot the bill.

The Jerusalem Post article mentions this opening, which took place on the same day,

Also on Monday [May 19, 2014], students and delegates from across the globe gathered to see Vice Premier of The People’s Republic of China Lui Yandong speak at the inauguration of the Confucius Institute at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Confucius Institutes have been established at universities around the world by the Chinese Ministry of Education to promote the learning of Mandarin Chinese and Chinese culture.

This is the second such institute, following the founding of Tel Aviv University’s Confucius Institute in 2007.

“The institute in Tel Aviv is for basic Chinese teaching. Here in the Hebrew University they have East Asian studies and they’ll be cooperation with that. Here there’ll be advanced study of Chinese history and culture,” said 21-year-old student Noa Yang, who not only helped organize the event but also sang during the ceremony.

Both the XIN Center and the new Confucius Institute are part of a much larger initiative according to the Jerusalem Post article,

The initiatives are the latest in a wave of cooperative agreements between Israel and China, not just in education, but also politics and business.

In September [2013], Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa received a $130m. grant from the Li Ka Shing Foundation to build an academy called the Technion Guangdong Institute of Technology as a joint venture with China’s Shantou University.

Blum’s article mentions yet another project, an agricultural technology incubator (Note: A link has been removed),

More recently, as ISRAEL21c reported in early May, a joint-venture agricultural technology incubator is slated to be built in Anhui Province, China. It will operate under the auspices of Trendlines Agtech, a specialized investment unit of Israel’s Trendlines Group, which supports early-stage, promising medical and agricultural technology companies in Israel.

These kinds of cooperative efforts are part of a comprehensive plan by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to strengthen economic and technological ties with the People’s Republic. It was the impetus for his trip to China last year [2013].

Both these articles indicate that China and Israel are, as noted in the beginning of this post, developing more intimate relations both cultural and economic.

ETA May 28, 2014: JTA.org published a May 28, 2014 news item about a new Israel-China publication (Note: Links have been removed),

Introducing the Times of Israel Chinese on Wednesday [May 28, 2014], Times of Israel founding editor David Horovitz said in a column that it “focuses on the evolving high-tech and innovation areas of the Israeli-Chinese relationship.”

He added, “It also dips into Israeli culture and society, giving Chinese readers insights into Israel beyond the spheres of business and high-tech.”

You can find Times of Israel Chinese here but you will need Chinese language reading skills to fully appreciate it.

Single-element quasicrystal created in laboratory for the first time

There’s a background story which gives this breakthrough a fabulous aspect but, first, here’s the research breakthrough from a Dec. 24, 2013 news item on Nanowerk (Note: A link has been removed),

A research group led by Assistant Professor Kazuki Nozawa and Professor Yasushi Ishii from the Department of Physics, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Chuo University, Chief Researcher Masahiko Shimoda from the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) and Professor An-Pang Tsai from the Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials (IMRAM), Tohoku University, succeeded for the first time in the world in fabricating a three-dimensional structure of a quasicrystal composed of a single element, through joint research with a group led by Dr. Hem Raj Sharma from the University of Liverpool, the United Kingdom.

The Dec. 2, 2013 National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS; Japan) press release, which originated the news item, describes quasicrystals and the reasons why this particular achievement is such a breakthrough,

Quasicrystals are substances discovered in 1984 by Dr. Dan Shechtman (who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2011). [emphasis mine] To date, quasicrystals have been found in more than one hundred kinds of alloy, polymer and nanoparticle systems. However, a quasicrystal composed of a single element has not been found yet. Quasicrystals have a beautiful crystalline structure which is closely related to the golden ratio, called a quasiperiodic structure. This structure is made of a pentagonal or decagonal atomic arrangement that is not found in ordinary periodic crystals (see the reference illustrations). Due to the complexity of the crystalline structure and chemical composition, much about quasicrystals is still veiled in mystery, including the mechanism for stabilizing a quasiperiodic structure and the novel properties of this unique type of crystalline structure. For these reasons, efforts have been made for a long time in the quest for a chemically simple type of quasicrystal composed only of a single element. The joint research group has recently succeeded in growing a crystal of lead with a quasiperiodic structure which is modeled on the structure of a substrate quasicrystal, by vapor-depositing lead atoms on the quasicrystal substrate of an existing alloy made of silver (Ag), indium (In) and ytterbium (Yb). Success using this approach had been reported for fabricating a single-element quasiperiodic film consisting of a single atomic layer (two-dimensional structure), but there had been no successful case of fabricating a single-element quasiperiodic structure consisting of multiple atomic layers (three-dimensional structure). This recent success by the joint research group is a significant step forward toward achieving single-element quasicrystals. It is also expected to lead to advancement in various fields, such as finding properties unique to quasiperiodic structures that cannot be found in periodic crystals and elucidating the mechanism of stabilization of quasiperiodic structures.

Here’s an image illustrating the researchers’ achievement,

Illustrations of the deposition structure of lead. The Tsai cluster in the substrate quasicrystal which is near the surface of the substrate is cut at the point where it contacts the surface. While lead usually has a face-centered cubic structure, it is deposited on the quasicrystal substrate in a manner that it recovers Tsai clusters which are cut near the surface of the substrate. This indicates that a crystal of lead is grown with the same structure as the structure of the quasicrystal substrate. (Courtesy National Institute for Materials Science, Japan)

Illustrations of the deposition structure of lead. The Tsai cluster in the substrate quasicrystal which is near the surface of the substrate is cut at the point where it contacts the surface. While lead usually has a face-centered cubic structure, it is deposited on the quasicrystal substrate in a manner that it recovers Tsai clusters which are cut near the surface of the substrate. This indicates that a crystal of lead is grown with the same structure as the structure of the quasicrystal substrate. (Courtesy National Institute for Materials Science, Japan)

I suggested earlier that this achievement has a fabulous quality and the Daniel Schechtman backstory is the reason. The winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, Schechtman was reviled for years within his scientific community as Ian Sample notes in his Oct. 5, 2011 article on the announcement of Schechtman’s Nobel win written for the Guardian newspaper (Note: A link has been removed),

A scientist whose work was so controversial he was ridiculed and asked to leave his research group has won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Daniel Shechtman, 70, a researcher at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, received the award for discovering seemingly impossible crystal structures in frozen gobbets of metal that resembled the beautiful patterns seen in Islamic mosaics.

Images of the metals showed their atoms were arranged in a way that broke well-establised rules of how crystals formed, a finding that fundamentally altered how chemists view solid matter.

On the morning of 8 April 1982, Shechtman saw something quite different while gazing at electron microscope images of a rapidly cooled metal alloy. The atoms were packed in a pattern that could not be repeated. Shechtman said to himself in Hebrew, “Eyn chaya kazo,” which means “There can be no such creature.”

The bizarre structures are now known as “quasicrystals” and have been seen in a wide variety of materials. Their uneven structure means they do not have obvious cleavage planes, making them particularly hard.

In an interview this year with the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, Shechtman said: “People just laughed at me.” He recalled how Linus Pauling, a colossus of science and a double Nobel laureate, mounted a frightening “crusade” against him. After telling Shechtman to go back and read a crystallography textbook, the head of his research group asked him to leave for “bringing disgrace” on the team. “I felt rejected,” Shachtman said.

It takes a lot to persevere when most, if not all, of your colleagues are mocking and rejecting your work so bravo to Schechtman! And,bravo to the Japan-UK project researchers who have persevered to help solve at least part of a complex problem requiring that our basic notions of matter be rethought.

I encourage you to read Sample’s article in its entirety as it is well written and I’ve excerpted only bits of the story as it relates to a point I’m making in this post, i.e., perseverance in the face of extreme resistance.

Prima donna of nanomaterials (carbon nanotubes) tamed by scientists at Rice University (Texas, US), Teijin Armid (Dutch/Japanese company), and Technion Institute (based in Israel)

The big news is that a multinational team has managed to spin carbon nanotubes (after 10 years of work) into threads that look like black cotton and display both the properties of metal wires and of carbon fibers. Here’s more from the Jan. 10, 2013 news item on ScienceDaily,

“We finally have a nanotube fiber 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.

The Jan. 10, 2013 Rice University news release on EurekAlert, which originated the news item, describes some of the problems presented when trying to produce carbon nanotube fiber at an industrial scale,

The phenomenal properties of carbon nanotubes have enthralled scientists from the moment of their discovery in 1991. The hollow tubes of pure carbon, which are nearly as wide as a strand of DNA, are about 100 times stronger than steel at one-sixth the weight. Nanotubes’ conductive properties — for both electricity and heat — rival the best metal conductors. They also can serve as light-activated semiconductors, drug-delivery devices and even sponges to soak up oil.

Unfortunately, carbon nanotubes are also the prima donna of nanomaterials [emphasis mine]; they are difficult to work with, despite their exquisite potential. For starters, finding the means to produce bulk quantities of nanotubes took almost a decade. Scientists also learned early on that there were several dozen types of nanotubes — each with unique material and electrical properties; and engineers have yet to find a way to produce just one type. Instead, all production methods yield a hodgepodge of types, often in hairball-like clumps.

Creating large-scale objects from these clumps of nanotubes has been a challenge. A threadlike fiber that is less than one-quarter the thickness of a human hair will contain tens of millions of nanotubes packed side by side. Ideally, these nanotubes will be perfectly aligned — like pencils in a box — and tightly packed. Some labs have explored means of growing such fibers whole, but the production rates for these “solid-state” fibers have proven quite slow compared with fiber-production methods that rely on a chemical process called “wet spinning.” In this process, clumps of raw nanotubes are dissolved in a liquid and squirted through tiny holes to form long strands.

Thank you to the writer of the Rice University news release for giving me the phrase “prima donna of nanomaterials.”

The news release goes on to describe the years of work and collaboration needed to arrive at this point,

Shortly after arriving at Rice in 2000, Pasquali began studying CNT wet-spinning methods with the late Richard Smalley, a nanotechnology pioneer and the namesake of Rice’s Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology. In 2003, two years before his untimely death, Smalley worked with Pasquali and colleagues to create the first pure nanotube fibers. The work established an industrially relevant wet-spinning process for nanotubes that was analogous to the methods used to create high-performance aramid fibers — like Teijin’s Twaron — which are used in bulletproof vests and other products. But the process needed to be refined. The fibers weren’t very strong or conductive, due partly to gaps and misalignment of the millions of nanotubes inside them.

“Achieving very high packing and alignment of the carbon nanotubes in the fibers is critical,” said study co-author Yeshayahu Talmon, director of Technion’s Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute, who began collaborating with Pasquali about five years ago.

The next big breakthrough came in 2009, when Talmon, Pasquali and colleagues discovered the first true solvent for nanotubes — chlorosulfonic acid. For the first time, scientists had a way to create highly concentrated solutions of nanotubes, a development that led to improved alignment and packing.

“Until that time, no one thought that spinning out of chlorosulfonic acid was possible because it reacts with water,” Pasquali said. “A graduate student in my lab, Natnael Bahabtu, found simple ways to show that CNT fibers could be spun from chlorosulfonic acid solutions. That was critical for this new process.”

Pasquali said other labs had found that the strength and conductivity of spun fibers could also be improved if the starting material — the clumps of raw nanotubes — contained long nanotubes with few atomic defects. In 2010, Pasquali and Talmon began experimenting with nanotubes from different suppliers and working with AFRL scientists to measure the precise electrical and thermal properties of the improved fibers.

During the same period, Otto [Marcin Otto, Business Development Manager at Teijin Aramid] was evaluating methods that different research centers had proposed for making CNT fibers. He envisaged combining Pasquali’s discoveries, Teijin Aramid’s know-how and the use of long CNTs to further the development of high performance CNT fibers. In 2010, Teijin Aramid set up and funded a project with Rice, and the company’s fiber-spinning experts have collaborated with Rice scientists throughout the project.

“The Teijin scientific and technical help led to immediate improvements in strength and conductivity,” Pasquali said.

Study co-author Junichiro Kono, a Rice professor of electrical and computer engineering, said, “The research showed that the electrical conductivity of the fibers could be tuned and optimized with techniques that were applied after initial production. This led to the highest conductivity ever reported for a macroscopic CNT fiber.”

The fibers reported in Science have about 10 times the tensile strength and electrical and thermal conductivity of the best previously reported wet-spun CNT fibers, Pasquali said. The specific electrical conductivity of the new fibers is on par with copper, gold and aluminum wires, but the new material has advantages over metal wires.

Here’s an explanatory video the researchers have provided,

A more commercial perspective is covered in the Teijin Armid Jan. 11, 2013 news release (Note: A link has been removed),

“Our carbon nanotube fibers combine high thermal and electrical conductivity, like that seen in metals, with the flexibility, robust handling and strength of textile fibers”, explained Marcin Otto, Business Development Manager at Teijin Aramid. “With that novel combination of properties it is possible to use CNT fibers in many applications in the aerospace, automotive, medical and (smart) clothing industries.”

Teijin’s cooperation and involvement was crucial to the project. Twaron technology enabled improved performance, and an industrially scalable production method. That makes it possible to find applications for CNT fibers in a range of commercial or industrial products. “This research and ongoing tests offer us a glimpse into the potential future possibilities of this new fiber. For example, we have been very excited by the interest of innovative medical doctors and scientists exploring the possibilities to use CNT fiber in surgical operations and other applications in the medical field”, says Marcin Otto. Teijin Aramid expects to replace the copper in data cables and light power cables used in the aerospace and automotive industries, to make aircraft and high end cars lighter and more robust at the same time. Other applications could include integrating light weight electronic components, such as antennas, into composites, or replacing cooling systems in electronics where the high thermal conductivity of carbon nanotube fiber can help to dissipate heat.

Teijin Aramid is currently trialing samples of CNT fiber on a small scale with the most active prospective customers. Building up a robust supply chain is high on the project team’s list of priorities. As well as their carbon fiber, aramid fiber and polyethylene tape, this new carbon nanotube fiber is expected to allow Teijin to offer customers an even broader portfolio of high performance materials.

Teijin Group (which is headquartered in Japan) has been mentioned here before notably in a July 19, 2010 posting about a textile inspired by a butterfly’s wing (Morphotex) which, sadly, is no longer being produced as noted in a more recent April 12, 2012 posting about Teijin’s then new fiber ‘Nanofront™’ for use in sports socks.

Bloodless blood tests

In the foreseeable future there’ll be no need to stick needles/syringes into your arm (or other body part) to draw blood for testing if these Israeli scientists have their way. Instead, someone can take an image of your blood, from the Aug. 31, 2012 news item on Nanowerk,

An Israeli team has demonstrated a non-invasive technique for imaging blood cells in vivo that could eliminate the need to extract blood from many patients. Powered by the Andor Newton Electron Multiplying EMCCD camera, their high-resolution Spectrally Encoded Flow Cytometry (SEFC) probe offers primary care physicians the capability to detect directly a wide range of common medical disorders, such as anaemia and bacterial infection, and potentially life threatening conditions, including sepsis, thrombosis and sickle cell crisis.

As well as enabling an immediate medical response to be offered, SEFC could also allow large-scale screening for common blood disorders. Vitally, its ability to directly and continuously visualise blood cells flowing inside patients could also provide an early warning of a medical emergency, such as internal bleeding, in post-operative and critical-care conditions.

SEFC was developed by the Biomedical Optics Laboratory, headed by Dr. Dvir Yelin, at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. Their focus is the application of advanced optics to address some of today’s clinical challenges, particularly the development of non- or minimally-invasive diagnostic tools.

Here’s a description of the difficulties (and how they were solved) with imaging blood that’s beneath skin. From the Aug. 31, 2012 Andor news release,

According to Lior Golan, one of the researchers at the Biomedical Optics Laboratory, two major challenges needed to be solved. “SEFC Images of fast-moving blood cells are acquired from deep under the surface of the skin through tissue that scatters the light. This means that very little light is available and necessitates the use of a spectrometer equipped with a high-speed line camera. The Andor Newton DU970N-BV camera provided our team with a combination of high sensitivity and the required line rate for imaging physiological blood flow. Switching between 2-D image and full vertical binning mode on the Newton camera also made the alignment of the spectrometer very easy and the ability to customise the Labview software development kit to control the camera was very convenient.”

Having demonstrated the clinical potential of SEFC, the team believes that miniaturization of the probe’s optics is feasible to produce a compact, hand-held SEFC probe, free of moving parts and connected to the main system console by just a pair of optical fibers. This would allow the application of SEFC for minimally invasive applications, either as a standalone device or through the instrument channel of an endoscope.

Antoine Varagnat, Product Specialist at Andor, notes that “Overcoming the challenges of meaningful bio-parameters measurement in vivo while maximizing patient comfort has been an increasing research focal point in recent years. Golan’s team has been very successful in that regards with their innovative technique, taking full advantage of the ultra low-light detection capability and acquisition speed capabilities of Andor’s Newton EMCCD detector and also opening the door to routine in vivo, non-invasive blood diagnosis equipment in the near future”.

I always liked it when the ‘Star Trek’ doctors diagnosed problems non-invasively by moving a ‘tricorder’ or other device over the body and with this work in Israel we seem to be moving closer to making that fiction a reality.