Nanotechnology

Cutting edge nanomaterials technology was showcased in the event of Pitch for Success held at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore on 18th November 2011. A scalable production of ultrahigh purity single-walled nanotubes with low cost was presented for the potential applications of electronics and biomedicines. A novel manufacturing process to synthesize large-area graphene without substrate transferring and etching process has been developed to produce transparent conductive films replacing ITO. Atomic layer deposition technique was adopted to fabricate electrochromic photonic crystals as an interlayer in the glass, enabling smart window to change colors, block UV, heat, and sunlight.

An entirely new way to control thermal effects "This points at an entirely new way to control thermal effects that is likely to have a significant impact in microelectronics on the design of smart phones and computers, in optoelectronics on the design of lasers and LEDs, and in a number of other fields," said Greg Walker, associate professor of mechanical engineering at Vanderbilt and an expert in thermal transport who was not directly involved in the research.

According to Li, the force that holds the two nanoribbons together is a weak electrostatic attraction called the van der Waals force. (This is the same force that allows the gecko to walk up walls.)

"Traditionally, it is widely believed that the phonons that carry heat are scattered at van der Waals interfaces, which makes the ribbon bundles' thermal conductivity the same as that of each ribbon. What we discovered is in sharp contrast to this classical view. We show that phonons can cross these interfaces without being scattered, which significantly enhances the thermal conductivity," said Li. In addition, the researchers found that they could control the thermal conductivity between a high and a low value by treating the interface of the nanoribbon pairs with different solutions.

The enhancement is completely reversible

One of the remarkable aspects of the effect Li discovered is that it is reversible. For example, when the researchers wetted the interface of a pair of nanoribbons with isopropyl alcohol, pressed them together and let them dry, the thermal conductivity was the same as that of a single nanoribbon. However, when they wetted them with pure alcohol and let them dry, the thermal conductivity was enhanced. Then, when they wetted them with isopropyl alcohol again, the thermal conductivity dropped back to the original low value.

"It is very difficult to tune a fundamental materials property such as thermal conductivity and the demonstrated tunable thermal conductivity makes the research especially interesting," Walker said.

One of the first areas where this new knowledge is likely to be applied is in thermal management of microelectronic devices like computer chips. Today, billions to trillions of transistors are jammed into chips the size of a fingernail. These chips generate so much heat that one of the major factors in their design is to prevent overheating. In fact, heat management is one of the major reasons behind today's multi-core processor designs.