Electronic Products Word of the Week: Nanobiocomposite

“Nanobiocomposite” is an adjective describing the marriage of carbon nanotubes (sometimes abbreviated “CNTs”) and biological material. Don’t be surprised to find the word in the near future as a noun as well. Its concept is now emerging from a number of sources. As defined in an article in a recent edition of Electronic Products, “Carbon nanotubes are very strong, electrically conductive structures a single nanometer in diameter, or approximately the size of 10 hydrogen atoms in a row.” Because of their unique electrical, mechanical, thermal, and optical properties, nanotubes are being explored for a variety of electronic technologies (click here to see a partial list as reported in Electronic Products), among them those that involve biological processes.
Most recently, six researchers report in the journal ACS Nano that they merged the carbon nanotubes with “the amazing natural properties” of the Morpho butterfly's wings — in addition to being lightweight, thin, and flexible, the wings absorb solar energy, shed water quickly, and are self-cleaning. The result is a nanobiocomposite material that shows promise for wearable electronic devices, highly sensitive light sensors, and sustainable batteries.

Source: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nn403083v

Eijiro Miyako, Takushi Sugino, Toshiya Okazaki, Alberto Bianco, Masako Yudasaka, and Sumio Iijima explain in their paper that Morpho butterfly wings have natural properties that are beyond the capabilities of any current technology to reproduce artificially. The team describes growing a honeycomb network of carbon nanotubes on Morpho butterfly wings, creating a composite material that could be activated with a laser. The resulting material heated up faster than the original components by themselves, exhibited high electrical conductivity and had the ability to copy DNA on its surface without absorbing it. “Our present study highlights the important progress that has been made toward the development of smart nanobiomaterials for various applications such as digital diagnosis, soft wearable electronic devices, photosensors, and photovoltaic cells,” the scientists state.
This is the latest use of carbon nanotubes in biologic research. Earlier this year, a team of researchers at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences designed a “bio-battery” that used carbon nanotubes in the cathode. More recently, two New Jersey Institute of Technology professors, Reginald Farrow and Alokik Kanwal, have created a carbon-nanotube-based device to noninvasively and quickly detect mobile single cells inside of just one drop of blood. Nanobiocomposite is a term that will recur frequently in the news.