Summary of Nanotubes

Nanotechnology has become a common term in the news for the past few years. Anything microscopic in nature that is used to build something falls under the term. Relatively few new discoveries are made in the microscopic range. The one that has a lot of scientist exited is nanotubes. Some companies have reassigned their staff heavily to be at the forefront of the nanotube era. Others are calling it the next industrial revolution A history of the discovery and types of nanotubes can be found here.

What are nanotubes? The most common of which is a single wall carbon nanotube (SWNT, fullerene), at about 50,000 times thinner than a human hair. Next in line is the multi-wall (MWNT) nanotube followed by nanohorns, nanorings, nanoeggs, and others. Scientists are announcing breakthroughs almost everyday. Already, over 320 products currently on the market contain nanotubes.

Nanotube Forest Multi-wall nanotube (MWNT)

Nanoring Buckyballs (C60) and variants, and single-wall nanotube (SWNT).

How will this affect computer organization and design? Recently a company announced the release of CMOS built with nanotubes. These will change how memory is used by allowing computers to have instant on and off states due to no latency requirements, and reorganize the hierarchy of cache by eliminating all other types, even up to the level of hard drives. Another announced the use of MWNT's to produce an LCD that can run on batteries for extended periods.

Nanotube Transistor

Research shows that capacitors made from nanotubes have the capacity of over 7 1/2 times more storage than today's super capacitors. These capacitors also allow controlled release so are able to act as a battery. New batteries already using this technology have hit the market recently, allowing much more storage, unlimited charges, and recharge times at around 5 minutes for a 90% charge.

Intel and others are devoting large amounts of research into ways to use nanotubes to develop future chips. Nanotubes change their electrical properties by changing their shape. They can be a super-conductor, semi-conductor, or a non-conductor depending on the twist. Researchers envision chips that reprogram themselves in order to generate the best use of the processor. If a program uses 90% floating point operations and 10% memory access then multiple processors would reorganize themselves to do floating point operations.

Scientist are working to a point where you pull out a wallet size computer. Unfold it, bend it so that it looks like a laptop, and place your hands down. That part would become the keyboard and the part bent up would become the screen. Need speakers, TV tuner, satellite receiver… It’s all just a program away. When the system can re-manufacture itself, what is the limit?