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| Texas NanoEnergy Collaborative |
Principal Investigators
HARC will engage with NASA JSC and Rice University's Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory (CNL) in a technology transfer program to accelerate the development of Quantum Wire technology incorporating single walled carbon nanotubes. The objective of the project is to engage the partners in an iterative process to promote rapid technical development of quantum wire with properties suitable for use by NASA and to isolate specific clean energy applications where it may also find early use. In its role as program lead, HARC will provide technical and organizational guidance to the team regarding actions, approaches, and needs that can more quickly advance the quantum wire technology across key intermediary technology readiness levels that may not be the primary expertise of either NASA or CNL. HARC will facilitate active communications among the team members, test and evaluate quantum wire samples produced by CNL, and evaluate specific applications that might benefit from early adoption of quantum wire technology.
Technology development at CNL will be guided by applications requirements of NASA and others identified by HARC. The performance needed by NASA and other potential early adopters will be provided to CNL so that the research and development strategy remains consistent with end-use requirements. HARC will test and characterize intermediate quantum wire samples to quantify progress, and then it will communicate technology and program status to NASA and provide rapid technical feedback to CNL.
CNL will engage in basic research to promote "seeded growth and separation" techniques needed to isolate and produce greater concentrations of armchair SWNT. By creating methods to isolate armchair nanotubes in the growth process, CNL will be able to produce quantum wire samples with increasingly greater concentrations of armchair nanotubes leading to improved electrical conductivity. CNL will provide HARC with quantum wire samples on a monthly basis. Initially, the samples are anticipated to be a meter in length and approximately 50 microns in diameter. CNL will further develop the production methods, potentially including new approaches, in order to improve the quality of the quantum wire and to increase the production rate. The production of numerous quantum wire samples generated from different processing conditions and separation techniques will allow CNL greater latitude to experiment.
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| Page Updated/Reviewed: 10/24/2007 10:32 AM |
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