Skip to main content

Frontiers of Engineering Reports on Leading-Edge Engineering From the 2000 NAE Symposium on Frontiers in Engineering (2001) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:

Science and Technology of Nanotube-Based Materials
Pages 89-92

The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.


From page 89...
... News from NASA indicates that, in the near future, spacecraft may be based solely on carbon material powered by either fuel cells based on carbon materials or lithium-iron batteries based on nanomaterials. Carbon materials also were featured very prominently in the recent national nanotechnology initiative and were mentioned in the President's State of the Union address, in which he referred to carbon nanotubes as a thousand times stronger than steel.
Read the entire page →
From page 90...
... Although rapid progress has been made in terms of synthesis of carbon nanotubes with selected diameters and orientation, there is still no effective method to control the nanotube chirality that is a prerequisite for utilizing carbon nanotubes in electronic devices. Nanotechnology is becoming a reality in no small part due to advances in imaging technology such as scanning probe microscopy and electron microscopy.
Read the entire page →
From page 91...
... For example, we have recently demonstrated applications of carbon nanotubes in gas discharge tubes used to protect houses and telephone lines from overvoltage (Rosen et al., 2000~. This is a relatively simple device composed of two metal electrodes in an inert gas environment.
Read the entire page →
From page 92...
... They are very stable to about a thousand surges, without much degradation. Carbon nanotubes are, indeed, very interesting in the sense that the material is not only an ideal system to study fundamental science in one dimension but also has promising properties that can lead to some very practical devices in the near future.
Read the entire page →

Key Terms

  • carbon nanotube
  • field emission
  • gas discharge
  • current density
  • discharge tubes

  • carbon materials
  • utilizing carbon
  • inert gas
  • emission displays
  • electron field

  • aspect ratio
  • ago noted
  • field emitters
  • simple device
  • display based

  • rice university
  • threshold electric
  • telephone lines
  • apply heat
  • vapor deposition

  • lightning strike
  • vacuum level
  • practical devices
  • battery lifetime
  • metal electrodes

  • nanotubes useful
  • simple structure
  • significantly enhance
  • field emitter
  • measurements performed


    • This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
    More information on Chapter Skim is available.