Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771 

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM 

Monday, April 30, 2001 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium 

Meyya Meyyappan

ABSTRACT -- This talk will provide an overview of emerging nanotechnology activities for NASA applications, with specific emphasis on the carbon nanotube (CNT) and its applications in space transportation, avionics, and space missions.  CNT, depending on chirality and diameter, can be metallic or semiconductor and thus allows formation of metal-semiconductor and semiconductor-semiconductor junctions.  CNT exhibits extraordinary  mechanical properties: Young's modulus over 1 Tera Pascal, tensile strength of 200 GPa, and a high breaking strain.  Its thermal conductivity in the axial direction is comparable to thin film diamond.  The combination of remarkable mechanical properties and unique electronic properties offers significant potential for revolutionary applications in electronics devices, computing and data storage technolgy, sensors, composites, storage of hydrogen or lithium for battery development, and nanoelectromechanical systems(NEMS), and as tips in scanning probe microscopy (SPM) for imaging and nanolithography.  Thus CNT synthesis, characterization, and applications touch upon all disciplines of science and engineering.  We have significant work in progress in some of the above areas, particularly in CNT growth and characterization, sensor development, and SPM applications, as well as a strong computational nanotechnolgy program.

SPEAKER -- Meyya Meyyappan is the Project Manager as well as Senior Scientist for Nanotechnolgy at NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA.  He is a member of the Interagency Working Group on Nanotechnolgy (IWGN) established by the Office of Science and Technolgy Policy (OSTP).  The IWGN is responsible for putting together the National Nanotechnolgy Initiative.  Dr. Meyyappan's group, consisting of 40 scientists, has been engaged in carbon nanotube (CNT) based nanotechnolgy, protein nanotubes, Bacteriorhodapsin based data storage, biosensor development, molecular electronics, quantum computing, computational electronics,  computational optoelctronics, and computational nanotechnology.