Phys.org July 26, 2024 Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs), which typically exhibit great toughness, have emerged as promising candidates for innovative energy storage solutions. An international team of researchers (Japan, USA – University of Maryland Baltimore County, Michigan State University, South Africa) produced SWCNT ropes wrapped in thermoplastic polyurethane elastomers, and demonstrated experimentally that a twisted rope composed of these SWCNTs possesses the remarkable ability to reversibly store nanomechanical energy. The gravimetric energy density of the twisted ropes reaches up to 2.1 MJ kg−1, exceeded the energy storage capacity of mechanical steel springs by over four orders of magnitude and surpassed advanced lithium-ion […]
Tag Archives: Carbon nanotubes
A 2D ‘antenna’ boosts light emission from carbon nanotubes
Phys.org March 22, 2024 Nanomaterials exhibit excitonic quantum processes occurring at room temperature. However, low dimensionality imposes strict requirements for conventional optical excitation. Researchers in Japan found that exciton transfer in carbon-nanotube/tungsten-diselenide heterostructures occur when alignment could be systematically varied. The mixed-dimensional heterostructures displayed a pronounced exciton reservoir effect where the longer-lifetime excitons within the two-dimensional semiconductor were funneled into carbon nanotubes through diffusion. The new excitation pathway presented several advantages, including larger absorption areas, broadband spectral response, and polarization-independent efficiency. When band alignment was resonant, they observed substantially more efficient excitation via tungsten diselenide compared to direct excitation of […]