Скачать или смотреть Kavli Exploration Award: Carbon Nanotube Synthesis

An international team of researchers received $4M to advance understanding of carbon nanotube synthesis and its potential for producing industrial materials more sustainably. The foundation’s $1.9M Kavli Exploration Award in Nanoscience for Sustainability sparked an additional $2.2M from Carbon Hub to pursue this important research. The collaboration is led by Matteo Pasquali of Rice University.

Manufacturing steel and copper generates over 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet these materials are in high demand. Since net-zero goals require a tripling of the electricity grid, this will require tons of these strong and conductive materials (among their myriad other uses). Significant efforts are underway to reduce metal manufacturing emissions, but what if instead these materials could be replaced with a sustainable alternative?

When synthesized properly, carbon nanotubes can have strength to rival steel and conductivity to rival copper, making them a promising and far more sustainable candidate to replace the hard-to-decarbonize materials widely used in infrastructure. The raw material to make nanotubes, natural gas, can be sustainably mined in vast quantity but currently is unsustainably burned as fuel. As the world turns to non-carbon energy, this resource could become available to sustainably produce global quantities of nanotubes, replacing dirtier materials and generating clean hydrogen as a byproduct.