MIT announces creation of nano-battery (TheNewEconomy)

Researchers develop nanotech battery offering a highly efficient power ratio never before accomplished

Imagine a series of infinitesimally fine tubes just billionths of a metre in width coated in a chemical fuel and producing 100 times more electrical power than a conventional battery.

If you think this is a piece of far-fetched sci-fi daydreaming, you haven't seen the work of a team of nanotechnology pioneers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The MIT team led by Dr Michael Strano, managed to coat carbon nanotubes with cyclotrimethylene trinitramine, a potent chemical fuel, and used an electric spark or laser to set off a reaction in a bundle of the coated tubes. Carbon nanotubes are known to conduct heat very uniformly – and very rapidly – along their length, at speeds up to 100 times faster than that of metals. Dr Strano's team were interested in finding out what would happen if a chemical reaction were to occur on these nanotubes; they discovered that the latter served to guide the reaction and accelerate it by an astonishing factor of 10,000. The team's findings were published in the journal Nature Technology. 

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