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Carbon nanotubes have long been touted as the wonder material of the future. Applications cited for carbon nanotubes range from super fast computers and ultra small electronics through to materials that are lightweight yet super strong and tougher than diamond.
Several techniques have been devised for producing carbon nanotubes but, getting these materials and devices from the laboratory to the marketplace is obstructed by one inherent problem. Scaling up laboratory production techniques to produce commercial quantities of high quality, high purity carbon nanotubes is a difficult process. But this is set to change with another type of recently discovered nanotube currently under investigation.
This promising new material is molybdenum-sulfur-iodine nanowires. Researchers from Jožef Stefan Institute have investigated the atomic and electronic structure of molybdenum-sulfur-iodine molecular nanowires as well as their basic transport, optical and mechanical properties. The research has now been published in a special edition of the open access journal, AZoJono and can be accessed in its entirety at http://www.azonano.com/Details.asp?ArticleID=2039.
This special edition of AZoJono* features a number of papers from DESYGN-IT, the project seeking to secure Europe as the international scientific leader in the design, synthesis, growth, characterisation and applications of nanotubes, nanowires and nanotube arrays for industrial technology.
The research team of D. Dvorsek, D. Vengust, V. Nicolosi, W.J. Blau, J.C. Coleman and D. Mihailovic found that the material also known as MoSIx nanowires was relatively easy to synthesise and disperse making it highly suited to commercialisation. The properties of the nanowires point to them being suited for use in applications such as battery electrodes, tribology and field emission displays. Ongoing research will look at growth mechanisms, stoichiometry control, magnetoelasticity and electrostrictive properties.
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