NANOTUBE ENERGY

By GABRIELLA MANGINO

Conventional batteries are antique technology. They’ve been around since the 1800’s, and require toxic, non-renewable materials. Also, it’s garbage how their energy leaks away over time? Luckily, tiny tubes coated with chemical fuel could bring an end to the reign of alkaline and lithium — and they might just usher in a new age of miniscule electronics.

Michael Strano and a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been working with wire-like molecules, a mere billionth of a meter across, called “nanotubes.” These little guys are coated with cyclotrimethylene trinitramine, a fuel that generates bits of electric current when triggered. Strano told the BBC “one property that nanotubes have is that they conduct heat very, very well along their length, up to a hundred times faster than in metal.”

Read the rest on Motherboard.

By GABRIELLA MANGINO 1 year ago

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