| HOME >> BIOLOGY >> TECHNOLOGY |
DURHAM, N.C. A team of Duke University chemists has perfected a simple way to make tiny copper nanowires in quantity. The cheap conductors are small enough to be transparent, making them ideal for thin-film solar cells, flat-screen TVs and computers, and flexible displays.
"Imagine a foldable iPad," said Benjamin Wiley, an assistant professor of chemistry at Duke. His team reports its findings online this week in Advanced Materials.
Nanowires made of copper perform better than carbon nanotubes, and are much cheaper than silver nanowires, Wiley said.
The latest flat-panel TVs and computer screens produce images by an array of electronic pixels connected by a transparent conductive layer made from indium tin oxide (ITO). ITO is also used as a transparent electrode in thin-film solar cells.
But ITO has drawbacks: it is brittle, making it unsuitable for flexible screens; its production process is inefficient; and it is expensive and becoming more so because of increasing demand.
"If we are going to have these ubiquitous electronics and solar cells," Wiley said, "we need to use materials that are abundant in the earth's crust and don't take much energy to extract." He points out that there are very few materials that are known to be both transparent and conductive, which is why ITO is still being used despite its drawbacks.
However, Wiley's new work shows that copper, which is a thousand times more abundant than indium, can be used to make a film of nanowires that is both transparent and conductive.
Silver nanowires also perform well as a transparent conductor, and Wiley contributed to a patent on the production of them as a graduate student. But silver, like indium, is rare and expensive. Other researchers have been trying to improve the performance of carbon nanotubes as a transparent conductor, but without much luck.
"The fact that copper nanowires are cheaper and work better makes
'/>"/>
| Contact: Karl Leif Bates karl.bates@duke.edu 919-681-8054 Duke University Source:Eurekalert |
Related biology technology :
1. Chemists measure copper levels in zinc oxide nanowires
2. Carbon nanotubes outperform copper nanowires as interconnects
3. Paper electrified by copper particles
4. Graphene may have advantages over copper for IC interconnects at the nanoscale
5. Carbon nanotubes to be replaced by MoSIx nanowires in high-tech devices says new study
6. High Q NIST nanowires may be practical oscillators
7. Engineers make first active matrix display using nanowires
8. Spiraling nanotrees offer new twist on growth of nanowires
9. Nanowires may boost solar cell efficiency, UC San Diego engineers say
10. Strong elasticity size effects in ZnO nanowires
11. Researchers peer into nanowires to measure dopant properties
| Copyright © 2003-2012 Bio-Medicine. All rights reserved. ABOUT | CONTACT US | DISCLAIMER | PRIVACY POLICY | TERMS AND CONDITIONS |  |