Nanotubes are awesome

First of all, let me tell you that nanotubes are awesome. This picture shows how you can wrap nanotubes around each other to make an extremely strong "rope."


Each of the rods you see represents a bond between two carbon atoms. Carbon is freakin fantastic. I won't get in to the properties that make carbon so awesome, but this awesome element can be seen all around you in many forms. Carbon is the basis for our life. Carbon is found in the CO2 that you breath out which is necessary for photosynthesis to make O2 for you to breath in. Diamonds, one of the hardest substances known to man (behind nanotubes), are made from pure carbon (well hopefully). Carbon forms in to tiny sheets that give graphite its phenomenal and unique lubricant properties. Anyways, enough about my love of carbon (can you tell I like science?).

So, back to nanotubes. Here's some properties:
- Composed purely of carbon
- Are tiny tubes about 10,000 times thinner than a human hair. Nanotubes are named for their size. They are on the order of the nano magnitude (1 nanometer=ten to the negative nine meters (meaning one billionth of a meter))
- Consist of interlinking and rolled up hexagon carbon structures
- Were discovered in 1991
- Have the potential for use as minuscule wires or in ultrasmall electronic devices, optics, construction, etc.
- Efficient conductors of heat
- Are difficult to make
- IBM announced this month that they have made an electronic circuit out of nanotubes

Anyways, the list could go on, but back to the main purpose of this post. Nanotubes can act as "thermal velcro" to reduce computer chip heating. This is a big problem as computer chips have gotten big, more powerful, and faster. They simply heat up too much, lowering their capacity to do work. As I said above, nanotubes are efficient conductors of heat.

From ScienceDaily:

Engineers have created carpets made of tiny cylinders called carbon nanotubes to enhance the flow of heat at a critical point where computer chips connect to cooling devices called heat sinks, promising to help keep future chips from overheating.
Researchers are trying to develop new types of "thermal interface materials" that conduct heat more efficiently than conventional materials, improving overall performance and helping to meet cooling needs of future chips that will produce more heat than current microprocessors. The materials, which are sandwiched between silicon chips and the metal heat sinks, fill gaps and irregularities between the chip and metal surfaces to enhance heat flow between the two.
Purdue University researchers have made several new thermal interface materials with carbon nanotubes, including a Velcro-like nanocarpet.
"The bottom line is the performance that we see with nanotubes is significantly better than comparable state-of-the-art commercial materials," said Timothy Fisher, an associate professor of mechanical engineering who is leading the research. "Carbon nanotubes have excellent heat-conduction properties, and our ability to fabricate them in a controlled manner has been instrumental in realizing this application."

Posted in: Nanotubes, Computer, IBM