Carbon nanotubes and self-assembling chips - the future of gadget technology?
23 March 2010
One of the constant themes of technology has always been innovation; even when a particular technology was working well, researchers would be working on some new innovation to replace it. This stretches back for as long as humanity has been using tools, with notable recent examples being the development of the car (from early, steam-powered vehicles, to cars running on fossil fuels, and onwards into cars that will run on batteries or hydrogen fuel cells) and the home entertainment industry (from VHS, to DVD, to BluRay).
When it comes to the loosely-defined class of 'gadgets', new innovations are already starting to emerge, which promise to revolutionise how gadgets are produced, how they work, and how we use them.
One of the most interesting technologies to emerge in recent times is self-assembling silicon platters, which would have one very crucial advantage in all kinds of gadgets, from mobile phones to laptops, or even games consoles: storage media produced in this way are incredibly small. This would inevitably lead to a device with much more storage than any currently available, without any increase in size. The key to this size advantage lies in the chips' construction: they are made using technologies at the molecular level, with a combination of individual silicon molecules, which self- assemble to form circuits. In this way, the technology can produce a storage device which, while no larger than a coin, would be able to hold the equivalent of around 250 DVDs.
As important as this technology could foreseeably be, however, there is another emerging technology which many commentators say is far more important. The possibilities when using this new technology are only now becoming apparent, but it has far-reaching implications beyond the gadget industry.
That technology is carbon nanotubes, and many experts have said that it will revolutionise every human industry, from electronics, to construction, and beyond. While a lot of science fiction has revolved around new 'wonder materials', it is beginning to look as if carbon nanotubes may be a real-world wonder material.
The key to the potential of carbon nanotubes lies in their astonishing range or properties. They are the strongest material yet discovered, and their astonishing strength, when applied to the gadget industry, would lead to extremely resilient and hard-wearing devices, which would allow a future mobile phone to look as good as a current iPhone, but have the toughness of something along the lines of the Sonim range of handsets. This toughness is extended by the fact carbon nanotubes are waterproof and fire-resistant, as well as, paradoxically, being both good insulators and good conductors of heat. So, mobile phones and laptops which rely on carbon nanotubes for their construction would look as sleek as, for example, the iPhone or the Dell Adamo XPS, whilst being exponentially harder to damage.
However, carbon nanotubes have more applications beyond the simple construction of mobile phones or laptops. Their electroacoustic properties are well-noted, so it is entirely possible to make the earpiece and the microphone of the future mobile phone using the same material as the body. Theoretically, it could even be possible to make the whole body of the phone itself into a speaker and/or microphone. Carbon nanotubes also have the potential to be used to make 'paper batteries', which have a higher capacity than current battery technology, and are considerably more energy-efficient.
Hence, through the use of carbon nanotubes, it is entirely possible that as well as being much tougher, the mobile phones and laptops of the future will have eco-friendliness inherently built into their very construction. As possible future scenarios also allow for wearable solar cells, made from carbon nanotubes, that eco-friendliness is extended even farther.
It is, therefore, no surprise that carbon nanotubes are being hailed as a true wonder material.