BOFFINS FROM WARWICK UNIVERSITY’S Chemistry department claim to have unleashed Carbon nanotubes’ potential as a super material, doing away with earlier views that it was simply black gunk at the bottom of a test tube.

The clever researchers seem to have come up with a way of making carbon nanotubes that instantaneously transform into an extremely sensitive, ready to use electrical circuit.

The team which consists of Professor Juilie Macpherson, Professor Patrick Unwin, Ioana Dumitrescu and Neil Wilson have just published their findings in a research paper called "Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Network Ultramicroelectrodes".

In it, the scientists describe how chemical vapour deposition was used, along with lithography to form disk shaped ultra microelectrodes made up of single walled carbon nanotubes. These nanotubes are then dropped randomly over the surface in as even a manner as possible. The overlap between them means that a metallic microcircuit forms as a single layer over the disc. This, however, only takes up 1 per cent of the entire disc surface area, which is useful in that it can deal with low signal to noise ratios, therefore practically eliminating any background noise.

The researchers also boast that their new circuit has 1000 times more sensitivity than regular ultramicroelecrode sensors, and that response times are ten times quicker.

Warwick’s boffins are already looking into the various possibilities for their new discovery. One option is testing out whether or not the devices could be useful in measuring levels of neurotransmitters. Another is potentially using the ultra microelectrodes in fuel cell catalysis. µ

L’Inq
Warwick University