CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A team of scientists at MIT have discovered a previously unknown phenomenon that can cause powerful waves of energy to shoot through minuscule wires known as carbon nanotubes. The discovery could lead to a new way of producing electricity, the researchers say. The phenomenon, described as thermopower waves, ‘opens up a new area of energy research, which is rare,’ says Michael Strano, MIT’s Charles and Hilda Roddey Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, who was the senior author of a paper describing the new findings that appeared in Nature Materials on March 7. The lead author was Wonjoon Choi, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering. Like a collection of flotsam propelled along the surface by waves traveling across the ocean, it turns out that a thermal wave - a moving pulse of heat - traveling along a microscopic wire can drive electrons along, creating an electrical current. The key ingredient in the recipe is carbon nanotubes - submicroscopic hollow tubes made of a chicken-wire-like lattice of carbon atoms. These tubes, just a few billionths of a meter (nanometers) in diameter, are part of a family of novel carbon molecules, including buckyballs and graphene sheets, that […]