Chemists announce nanotech breakthrough

Imagine you are looking through a very high-powered microscope at the smallest tube in the world – a single-walled carbon nanotube so tiny that a million can fit on the head of a pin.

Imagine too that the exterior of the tube is covered in small irregular bumps caused by oxygen molecules that cling to the outside like barnacles on a pier. Now imagine trying to slide something – a slightly larger tube perhaps – over the bumpy tube to smooth out the surface.

In this molecular, microscopic world, it isn’t easy; a near impossibility, in fact, that has proven a barrier to scientists for years.

But now, chemistry professor Fotios Papadimitrakopoulos and a team of researchers in the Nanomaterials Optoelectronics Laboratory at the Institute of Materials Science have found a way to smooth the surface of nanotubes, in what Papadimitrakopoulos describes as a major nanotechnology breakthrough that could have significant applications in medical imaging and other areas.

By developing a process in which a chemical ‘sleeve’ tightly wraps itself around the nanotube, Papadimitrakopoulos managed to not only create a smooth new surface on the nanotube but also to ‘clean’ its underlying exterior of defects in a way that has never been accomplished before.

Carbon nanotubes have traditionally been very poor emitters of light because of their bumpy exterior defects and have therefore been limited in some of their technological and medical applications.

As a result of the newly discovered wrapping process, Papadimitrakopoulos managed to increase the luminescence efficiency – the light emitting capability – of the nanotube 40-fold.

That increased luminescence, he says, opens the way for broad new advancements in science.

“The nanotube is the smallest tube on earth and we have found a sleeve to put over it,” says Papadimitrakopoulos, whose discovery is featured in the March 6 issue of Science magazine. (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/323/5919/1319)

“This is the first time that a nanotube was found to emit with as much as 20 percent luminescence efficiency.”

The more luminescent the nanotube, the brighter it appears under infrared irradiation or by electrical excitation (such as that provided by a light-emitting diode or LED).

Carbon nanotube emissions are not only extremely sharp, but they also appear in a spectral region where minimal absorption or scattering by soft tissue takes place, making them ideal for medical imaging, Papadimitrakopoulos says.