
At Stanford, nanotubes + ink + paper = instant battery - chanux
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2009/december7/nanotubes-ink-paper-120709.html
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stevedekorte
Aren't nanotubes weren't as carinogenically toxic as asbestos?

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thefool
I feel like he's fishing for publicity. All he really is doing is another way
to make paper conductive, but carbon paper has been around forever.

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aarongough
He's not simply making paper conductive. Something that is solely conductive
cannot store a charge. What he's doing is using a specially formulated ink to
turn the paper into a capacitor, which is far more novel than simply making
paper conductive.

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thefool
I don't think so, from his abstract: "Here, we show that commercially
available paper can be made highly conductive with a sheet resistance as low
as 1 ohm per square (Ω/sq) by using simple solution processes to achieve
conformal coating of single-walled carbon nanotube (CNT) and silver nanowire
films. Compared with plastics, paper substrates can dramatically improve film
adhesion, greatly simplify the coating process, and significantly lower the
cost." \- <http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/12/04/0908858106>

From what I understand, he is using the fact that the nano-tube (ink) layer is
conductive and the fact that paper acts as a good insulator to assume that he
can use this to craft a better capacitor.

Unless that "1 ohm per square" (something) is an incredibly low resistance,
then I fail to see what is so incredibly novel.

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aarongough
Re-reading the article: you are actually correct. He really is just working on
thin-film conductors. From my first reading of the article I was under the
impression that he was producing and entire capacitive device simply using a
printing process.

