Exploring Nanotechnology and the Future of Renewable Energy

imagine a future where every home office or building is painted with solar panels and its bricks operate as batteries thanks to nanotechnology there's a lot of promise but what is nanotechnology is it more science fiction than fact i'm matt farrell welcome to undecided [Music] when you hear the term nanotech chances are that some sci-fi book or movie pops into your head where they use the term to explain away some technological wonder or advancement don't worry about it it's nanotech it's become a deus ex machina for science fiction writers but what we're starting to see is that nanotechnology is responsible for great advances in physics biology chemistry engineering and material science it's responsible for the new age of modern technology that will help civilization reach for the stars and much more nanotechnology refers to our ability to study and engineer technologies at a nanoscale which is a range from one to 100 nanometers and that begs the question how small is a nanometer well if i tell you that a nanometer is one billionth of a meter or one millionth of a millimeter i don't think that really clears things up and i don't know about you but my brain kind of breaks trying to think about this kind of scale so let's try to put this in a different perspective a human hair is around 75 000 nanometers wide and remember the range for nanoscale is 1 to 100 nanometers still not doing it for you well let's flip it around imagine a marble measures one nanometer in comparison to that the earth would measure about one meter in diameter just let that sink in for a minute a marble compared to the size of our entire planet that's one nanometer compared to one meter given how mind-boggling these scales are we definitely have to give credit to the father of name of technology physicist richard feynman it all started with the american physical society meeting that was held at the california institute of technology on december 29 1959 feynman gave a talk that was titled there's plenty of room at the bottom where he speculated about being able to construct machines down to the molecular level and the concept behind nanotechnology was born it wasn't until 1974 that the term nanotechnology was coined by professor norio tenegucci while he worked on ultra precision machining as he put it nanotechnology mainly consists of the processing of separation consolidation and deformation of materials by one atom or one molecule so we had the concept then we had the term but it wasn't until 1981 that this theory became a reality when the development of the scanning tunneling microscope that helped scientists actually see atoms individually gerd binic and anarch roar developed the microscope at ibm zurich research laboratories in switzerland and were later awarded the nobel prize in physics in 1986 that major achievement was followed up by the atomic force microscope in 1985 which had the distinct advantage of imaging on almost all surfaces including biological samples glass composites and ceramics that would prove to be a major turning point with the advent of nanotechnology scientists were now able to manipulate individual atoms and that takes us into the realm of quantum mechanics which is the science behind how matter behaves in the atomic and subatomic scale thankfully that's out of scope for this video because it breaks my brain even more but basically it's how materials at this scale tend to behave differently and exhibit distinctive chemical and physical properties scientists were keen to learn and exploit this attribute to craft materials at a nanoscale and since 1981 we've come forward leaps and bounds in the field of nanotech there's so much that i could cover but in the interest of time i picked two categories for examples that are helping to make what seemed like science fiction into science fact for our future but i'd love to hear in the comments if there are any topics or examples that you'd like to see covered in a future video the first category is one that i talk about a lot solar nanotechnology is leading the charge for solar energy most silicon based solar panels which accounts for about 95 of commercial solar utilize nanoscale processes for manufacturing some are multi-junction solar cells which layer different solar technologies to broaden the wavelengths of light that can be captured and converted into energy this layer cake of solar cell technologies are measured in nanometers much thinner than the width of a human hair but it's the next generation of solar cells being researched now that could take things to a whole new level solar collecting paint is an exciting future possibility imagine the paint in your house or a building acting as a solar panel or how about your car chemistry professor richard l bruche from the university of southern california and researcher david h weber successfully developed solar collecting paint by using solar collecting nano crystals at only four nanometers in size nanocrystals can float in a liquid solution you could potentially fit 250 billion nanocrystals on the head of a pin they're that small brushy and weber were able to find an organic molecule that could keep the nanocrystals conductive without sticking to each other so why isn't this available in the market yet well those nanocrystals were built with cadmium which is a toxic metal researchers have been busy trying to find alternative materials and there are some really promising leads quantum dot solar cells are one area to look at quantum dots are semi-conducting particles that behave differently to their size and quantum mechanics like i mentioned earlier they have energy similarities to atoms which is why they're sometimes referred to as artificial atoms in june of 2020 researchers at the los alamos national laboratory were able to create cadmium free quantum dot solar cells their zinc doped variant has a high defect tolerance and is toxic element free this year researchers at the university of queensland were even able to break a new world efficiency record of 16.6 percent for quantum dot solar cells made from halide perovskite that's a 25 improvement in relative efficiency compared to the last record holder from 2017 so there's fast progress being made but the big challenge is around commercialization of the breakthrough so the university is working on a large-scale printing process in addition to continuing to improve efficiency then there's perovskite solar paint in 2014 researchers at the university of sheffield were able to develop a spray-on solar using perovskite which is a class of man-made compounds that share the same crystalline structure as the calcium titanium oxide mineral with the same name it happens to be one of those promising solar technologies in recent years because it has a broad absorption spectrum it consists of a 300 nanometer thin film with a crystal structure that aids solar absorption and can operate efficiently during cloudy days as well the scientific director at cell technologies dr conrad wachowski says that this could be printed using an inkjet printer swedish firm skanska tested it on a building in 2019 as expected to start producing it in 2021 with an expected cost to be about 58 dollars per meter and an efficiency around 10 percent the reason why all of these examples are so exciting is that paintable solar cells open the floodgates for where you can apply solar power painting the walls of a building not just the roof or as i mentioned earlier your car it should also help to reduce the cost of manufacturing solar technologies which will make it more accessible it's potentially a huge win-win but before i get to the second category i want to thank this video's sponsor me this episode is brought to you by vice versa with matt and ricky it's a new youtube channel and podcast that i'm doing with ricky from the 2-bit da vinci youtube channel where we talk about the latest news and evs and renewable energy be sure to check out the link in the description and let us know what you think now the second category i wanted to look at for this video is nanotechnology being applied to energy storage in a previous video i walked through graphene and carbon nanotubes and how they're impacting energy storage today specifically in my supercapacitor video i talked about how companies like nawa technologies and skeleton are building out graphene-based supercapacitors today skeletons products can be found helping to power major tram systems in big european hubs like warsaw and manheim as a quick refresher batteries and super capacitors share some similarities in how they work in a battery there's a positive and negative side which are called the cathode and the anode these two sides are submerged in a liquid electrolyte and are separated by a microperforated separator which only allows ions to pass through when the battery charges and discharges those ions flow back and forth from the cathode and the anode but capacitors are different they don't rely on chemical play in order to function instead they store potential energy electrostatically capacitors use a dielectric or an insulator between their plates to separate the collection of positive and negative charges building on each side of the plate it's this separation that allows the device to store energy and quickly release it it's basically capturing static electricity in one recent advancement in batteries from july of 2020 scientists from clemson nanomaterials institute were able to achieve a high rate capability fast diffusion high capacity and a long cycle life thanks to sandwiching silicon nanoparticles with carbon nanotubes called bucky papers the cycle life for lithium batteries with silicon-based anodes is usually less than 100. but thanks to the new sandwich silicon electrode structure they were able to achieve 500 cycles and deliver three times more capacity than graphite silicon happens to have 10 times higher capacity than graphite but it expands by about 300 volume as it absorbs ions the end result is an anode that breaks apart this nanostructure counters that factor and would help us replace graphite with silicon making much more efficient batteries but i've saved the craziest research i've seen in a while for last nanotechnologies could potentially turn bricks into batteries well more like super capacitors but that doesn't have the same alliteration washington university's institute of materials science and engineering took work from their micro supercapacitor research using iron oxide or rust as a conducting polymer also known as rust assisted vapor phase polymerization rolls right off the tongue now i'm not going to get bogged down into the technical details partially because my broken brain won't let me but what sets this process apart is that the nanostructures formed by this process are self-assembled other processes like this might take several steps and treatments which makes this process unique so i can hear you asking how does this possibly relate to bricks well that red pigment in the classic brick is you might have guessed it iron oxide or basically rust by applying their polymer process to a standard red brick you end up with a capacitor julio darcy assistant professor of chemistry who worked on this research described it in this work we have developed a coding of conducting polymer p dot which is comprised of nanofibers that penetrate the inner porous network of a brick a polymer coating remains trapped in a brick and serves as an ion sponge that stores and conducts electricity this process leaves a blue pdot coating on one side of the brick so that could easily be hidden on one side of a brick wall they estimate that it would take about 50 bricks to power an emergency lighting system for 5 hours so this clearly isn't going to power your entire house but then again a building is typically made up of thousands of bricks so there's a potential for a building's brick walls to act as a massive supercapacitor to absorb solar panel over production or cover peak energy use to smooth out demand and pair with the battery storage in a hybrid setup we're already seeing some of nanotechnology's benefits in the world around us today but the research and advancements we're seeing in the lab like these are what to look forward to in the future nanotech may have been an overused and blanket term that's lost a bit of its meaning to some of us but there's real progress being made so how do you like to paint your house in solar paint and is there any nano technology i should look into if you like this video be sure to check out one of the ones i've linked to right here and be sure to subscribe and hit that notification bell if you think i've earned it and as always a big thank you to all my patrons and to all of you for watching i'll see you in the next one

Channel: Undecided with Matt Ferrell

Views: 471,697

Keywords: nanotechnology, nanotechnology battery, nanotechnology battery technology, nanotechnology engineering, nanotechnology explained, nanotechnology solar cells, nanotechnology solar energy, nanotechnology solar panel efficiency, nanotechnology solar panels, what is nanotechnology, lithium ion battery, nanotech, renewable energy, renewable energy battery storage, renewable energy projects, renewable energy resources, solar paint, solar panels, solar power, undecided with matt ferrell

Id: -bYaFqubQDw

Length: 11min 16sec (676 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 15 2020