Just after suggesting (as per my Nov. 26, 2013 posting) that Florida is quietly becoming a center for nanotechnology efforts in the US, there’s a $1.4M funding announcement for Florida State University’s High-Performance Materials Institute (HPMI. From the Nov. 27, 2013 news item on Nanowerk,

Florida State researchers have been awarded more than $1.4 million from the National Science Foundation to develop a system that will produce large amounts of a state-of-the-art material made from carbon nanotubes that researchers believe could transform everything from the way airplanes are built to how prosthetic limbs fit the human body.

“The goal is clear — to show industry the ability to use this in large-scale quantities,” said Richard Liang, director of FSU’s High-Performance Materials Institute (HPMI) and a professor for the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering. “We’re looking at a more efficient, cost effective way to do this.”

The Nov. 26, 2013 Florida State University (FSU) news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, provides greater detail about buckypaper, the team’s research work, and the team’s hopes for this grant,

The material, buckypaper, is a feather-light sheet made of carbon nanotubes that is being tested in electronics, energy, medicine, space and transportation.  The aviation industry, for example, is doing tests with buckypaper, and it’s projected that it could replace metal shielding in the Boeing 787, currently made up of 60 miles of cable.

Engineers believe that replacing the cable with buckypaper could reduce the weight of the Boeing 787 by as much as 25 percent.

Florida State researchers have been engaged in other projects with buckypaper as well, including the use of the material in creating more advanced and comfortable prosthetic sockets for amputee patients and multifunctional lightweight composites for aerospace applications.

As revolutionary as buckypaper technology is, a major hurdle for its future use is that it can take two or more hours and can cost as much as $500 to make just a small 7-inch by 7-inch piece.  Companies like Boeing need large amounts of it to use on an aircraft.

However, the current process is neither fast nor cheap.

So, Liang will spend the next four years developing a process to produce large-scale amounts of buckypaper. The process and materials would then be patented and marketed to meet the demands of the industrial partners.

Liang will be joined on the project by Arda Vanli, an HPMI researcher and an assistant professor in the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, as well as researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology.

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) webpage listing the award describes the specific research being undertaken and introduces the term ‘Bucky-tapes’,

Award Abstract #1344672
SNM: Roll-to-Roll Manufacturing of High Quality Bucky-tape with Aligned and Crosslinked Carbon Nanotubes Through In-line Sensing and Control

…

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) demonstrate amazing properties; however, currently only a fraction of these properties can be transferred into products that can be used by engineers and consumers. To effectively transfer CNTs? properties into useful products requires a method to efficiently align and covalently interconnect the CNTs into tailored architectures at the nanoscale. This project will establish the fundamental understanding and foundation for using CNTs to make thin sheet materials, called Bucky-tapes, which can be rapidly produced in roll form and scaled-up for industrial applications. The proposed method will use a modified die-casting manufacturing process utilizing the self-repelling effects of selected flow media. In-situ ultra-violet (UV) reaction chemistry can covalently interconnect the CNTs rapidly to improve the load transfer and thermal and electronic transport properties of CNT networks. In-line multi-stage stretching of the web could orient the randomly dispersed interconnected CNT networks into specific patterns to provide greater strength and optimized transport properties. In-line Raman spectra monitoring and multistage process models will provide affordable, closed loop quality control and variation reduction methods for a high quality consistent nanomanufacturing process. A prototype will be built to demonstrate the continuous roll-to-roll process for manufacturing strong Bucky-tapes with high electrical and thermal conductivity, and low manufacturing cost.

This project can transform CNT thin films networks from a lab-scale demonstration material into commercially viable products with superior properties potentially surpassing the state-of-the-art carbon fiber material. The continuous Bucky-tapes can lead to new materials applications in aerospace, electronics, energy, medicine, and transportation. For example, continuous Bucky-tape could replace metal shielding of 60 miles of cables in the Boeing 787 and reduce cable weight by 25%. The education and outreach plan will expose especially under-represented students to molecular design, nanomanufacturing process development and quality control, structure-property relationship studies. Application oriented materials-by-design and nanomanufacturing process development will motivate students into nanotechnology, manufacturing and new materials development.

I had mentioned this team’s work on buckypaper (or are they now calling it Bucky-tape?) in an Oct. 4, 2011 posting which features a video about buckypaper and in which I noted the possible applications for buckypaper closely mirror those for CNC (cellulose nanocrystals) or, as it’s also known,  NCC (nanocrystalline cellulose).

You can check out Florida State University’s High Performance Materials Institute here.