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Schedule including this lecture.
Goddard Space Flight Center Engineering Colloquium
Date: Monday, April 30, 2001
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 technology, 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 nanotechnology program.
Meyya Meyyappan is the Project Manager as well as Senior Scientist for Nanotechnology at NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA. He is a member of the Interagency Working Group on Nanotechnology (IWGN) established by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). The IWGN is responsible for putting together the National Nanotechnology Initiative. Dr. Meyyappan's group, consisting of 40 scientists, has been engaged in carbon nanotube (CNT) based nanotechnology, protein nanotubes, Bacteriorhodapsin based data storage, biosensor development, molecular electronics, quantum computing, computational electronics, computational optoelctronics, and computational nanotechnology.
Colloquium Committee Sponsor: Dr. Jan Kalshoven
Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov