Good news for goths -- black somehow just got even blacker. MIT engineers have cooked up a material that's 10 times blacker than anything else previously reported. Capturing more than 99.96 percent of any incoming light, the material is made of verti...
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green.
So far Elon Musk has created next-gen spacecraft and some of the world's best electric cars -- could a fu...
British nanoelectronics company Surrey NanoSystems claims it has invented the world’s darkest material. Made of tightly packed carbon nanotubes, the company’s Vantablack reportedly absorbs 99.96% of the radiation that hits its surface. The result is a material so dark it looks like, well, like nothing.
The image above, which was posted by the Daily Mail courtesy of Surrey NanoSystems, shows how strange Vantablack can get. The aluminum foil is crumpled and bumpy, but you won’t be able to tell that by looking at the area that’s coated with the wonder material. Speaking with The Independent, Surrey NanoSystems Chief Technical Officer Ben Jensen said that if you made a dress out of Vantablack, “You would lose all features of the dress. It would just be something black passing through.”
Vantablack is also a breakthrough in that other carbon nanotube-based “super black” materials can only be applied to objects using high temperatures. Surrey NanoSystem’s relatively low temperature process makes its material applicable to a wider range of items. The company says it has already delivered Vantablack to the space sector, who can use the material to calibrate telescopes and make them detect even more light sources, and to the defense sector, because of reasons.
Garrison Bespoke is a luxury suit tailor in Toronto, but its latest product might as well come from the research labs of a secret intelligence agency in the UK. It’s a three-piece suit that’s strong enough to withstand attacks from a hunting knife and even 9mm bullets fired at close range, thanks to several layers of carbon nanotubes hidden inside the vest and suit jacket.
According to The Globe and Mail, Garrison Bespoke co-founder Michael Nguyen started development of the stylish life-saving device when one of their clients was assassinated. But because they are suit makers – and because bulletproof vests already exist – Garrison Bespoke ensures that its clients will enjoy protection without sacrificing style or comfort.
The company outlined its goals in developing the suit as follows: “First, to be modern and stylish. Second, to be light and comfortable. And, third, to be reliable and safe.” The video below is from CityNews’ report on the custom suit:
So how much will this ballin’ bullet-stopper cost you? The Globe and Mail says that a custom three-piece suit will set you back at least $20,000. I’m not sure if that’s in Canadian or US Dollars, but there’s not much of a difference between their values anyway. Garrison Bespoke also has a bulletproof polo shirt for $800, for casual yet life-threatening Fridays.
There are huge number of headphones available on the market today running the gamut from dirt cheap to incredibly expensive. There are headphones aimed at everyone from users who don’t really care what the music sounds like all the way up to audiophiles who will pay huge money to hear every little nuance in their favorite tracks. One thing all of those headphones have in common is that the speaker drivers use moving parts.
A group of researchers have created a new type of headphone that uses a driver with no moving parts, based on carbon nanotubes. The headphones are able to create sound using thermoacoustic effect. That means that sound is created relying on the expansion and contraction of air.
It’s unclear at this point how high the quality of music these carbon nanotube speakers will be able to create. We don’t know if it will be an everyman headset or capable of creating audiophile grade sound.
We also don’t know how much headphones using carbon nanotubes will cost or when they might be available. However, early indications are that headphones using this technology could be reasonably priced, since they could be produced using techniques similar to those used to create computer chips.
A group of researchers have created a very unique set of headphones that don't use moving parts for the speaker drivers. Rather than using moving parts, the speakers in these headphones use carbon...
Harnessing the awesome power of the Sun isn't just dependent on the efficiency of solar cells, but also on making them affordable. Current techniques aren't exactly cheap, but researchers from StanfordUniversity think they've made a bit of a breakthrough by producing a relatively inexpensive photovoltaic cell using nothing but carbon. We're sure other scientists might disagree with the 'world's first' claim, but those at Stanford think it's a matter of language, and that these other pretenders are "referring to just the active layer in the middle, not the electrodes." The team selected a trio of carbon types to use in their cell: a mixture of nanotubes and buckyballs make up the light-absorbing layer, while graphene is being utilized for the electrodes.
The carbon amalgam can be applied from solution using simple methods, meaning the flexible cells could be used to coat surfaces, although you won't be seeing it smeared over anything too soon. The prototype only touts a "laboratory efficiency of less than 1 percent," so it can't compete with traditional solar cells just yet. Also, it only absorbs a sliver of the light spectrum, but the researchers are looking to other forms of the wonder element which could increase that range. They are hoping that improving the structure of the cells will help to boost their efficiency, too. They might never generate the most energy, but the all-carbon cells can remain stable under extreme conditions, meaning they could find their calling in harsh environments where brawn is a little more important than status, or looks.
Commercialization of carbon nanotubes is one of the holy grails of next-gen computing, and IBM thinks it's made crucial steps toward making this a reality. This isn't the first time that we've heard such a claim, of course, but IBM's considerable resources will make this particularly interesting. The specific problem it's been tackling is placing enough semiconducting nanotubes together to be useful in commercial chips, with current attempts being more in the hundreds, rather than billions that would be required. The new approach uses ion-exchange chemistry that allows controlled placement of nanotubes at two orders of magnitude greater than before, with a density of roughly a billion per square centimeter. To achieve this, the nanotubes are mixed with a soap-like substance that makes them water-soluble. Next, a substrate comprising two oxides and a hafnium oxide "trench" is immersed in the soap-solution, which results in the nanotubes attaching to the hafnium oxide canals with a chemical bond. Simple when you think about it! IBM hopes that as the materials and method are readily accessible now, that industry players will be able to experiment with nanotube technology at a much greater scale. Though, as we've become accustomed, there's no solid timescales on when this might realistically unfold.
Carbon nanotube-based sensors are good at sniffing out all kinds of things, but applying the cylindrical molecules to a substrate has traditionally been a dangerous and unreliable process. Now, researchers at MIT have found a way to avoid the hazardous solvents that are currently used, by compressing commercially available nanotube powders into a pencil lead-shaped material. That allowed them to sketch the material directly onto paper imprinted with gold electrodes (as shown above), then measure the current flowing through the resisting carbon nanotubes -- allowing detection of any gases that stick to the material. It works even if the marks aren't uniform, according to the team, and the tech would open up new avenues to cheaper sensors that would be particularly adroit at detecting rotten fruit or natural gas leaks. For more info, sniff out the video after the break.
Back in the 1920s, Thomas Edison's dream of an electric automobile was ultimately foiled by those meddling petroleum engines. But thanks to nanotube research from Stanford University, one legacy from that era may regain some glory: nickel-iron batteries. It turns out that carbon nanotubes doped with nickel and iron crystals can top up the normally slow-charging cells in a matter of minutes -- according to the scientists, that's almost 1,000 times faster than in the past. Although the batteries couldn't power your Volt or Prius due to a lack of energy density, they could give an extra jolt to their lithium-ion siblings for quicker starts and regenerative braking. The researchers are working on improving stability to allow more charging cycles, but it might be an extra in-your-face for Edison if it pans out.
Good news for goths -- black somehow just got even blacker. MIT engineers have cooked up a material that's 10 times blacker than anything else previously reported. Capturing more than 99.96 percent of any incoming light, the material is made of verti...
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green.
So far Elon Musk has created next-gen spacecraft and some of the world's best electric cars -- could a fu...
