The new chemistry curriculum for first examinations in 2016 will be released within the next two or three months. We already know that there will be four options and that one of them is called ‘Materials’. It seems a reasonable assumption that some of the recent advances in nanotechnology will form part of this option. Chemistry has come a long way since the discovery of allotropes of carbon other than diamond and graphite. The science of nanotechnology really began with the discovery of buckminsterfullerene, C₆₀, in 1985. In 1996 Richard Smalley, Robert Curl and Harold Kroto won the Nobel Prize for this discovery. A few years later in 2004 a single layer of graphite was isolated and the 2010 Nobel Prize was awarded to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov for their discovery of graphene (see earlier blog on sticky tape and a pencil). As with nearly all new technologies there were many claims about how they would change the whole nature of science. A recent announcement does seem to be support many of these claims.

Laptops, smart phone and tablets all currently use silicon transistors packed in ever decreasing sizes on a chip. This ability to pack more and more on a single chip has resulted in increased processing speed, capability and memory. The laptops and smart phones of today have come a long way in a very short space of time. However there is one big drawback which will prevent the chips from becoming for ever smaller. As they work the silicon transistors waste power and release heat which explains why your laptop gets quite hot. There is a finite number that can be crammed together. For some time scientists have speculated that transistors made of graphene would not have this problem as carbon nanotubes (CNT) are considerably more efficient and generate much less heat. Until recently the problem has been in the difficulty of building long CNT circuits due to the presence of imperfections. However last month a team at Stanford University led by Subhashish Mitra reported in Nature that they had succeeded in building the first working computer using only CNT with no silicon transistors. It is still early days but it looks like computing power is set to continue to increase rapidly thanks to CNTs.