Engineers at Rice University made a breakthrough discovery, and have devised a way to sort nanotubes by their composition and diameter. This may not sound exciting initially, but accurately sorting nanotubes was a major hurdle, and now that there is a way to do it we're one step closer to having devices made from nanotubes.
"Scientists in the US have developed the first method to sort semiconductor carbon nanotubes by size. The technique, devised by Howard Schmidt and colleagues at Rice University, is based on dielectrophoresis and not only separates metallic nanotubes from semiconducting ones but also sorts the semiconducting tubes according to their diameters. The ability to separate and sort nanotubes like this will be essential for making devices from these materials (J. Am. Chem. Soc. in press)."
Marco Chiappetta
Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com
