Grabbing a silicon nanowire

[hughiealonso]

What is the diameter of the wire?

[Envergure]

The video won't play.

[ActiveStorage]

did u see that vibrational frequency at the end? ) looked like it could vibrate for quite a while

[NanoClips]

@ActiveStorage ... well in this setting it would vibrate forever, since it is fed with energy continuously - the mechanical noise in the system appears to contain frequencies close enough to the resonance frequency of the wire to make it go mad.

[EpochOfReason]

When are nanowire batteries going to replace lithium ion? This is going to change the world and give EV's the edge to take on the world!

[proff23]

You rock NanoClips

[hippydude89]

Would that wire be able to pierce skin? and is it too small to feel?

[NanoClips]

@hippydude89 it should be able to pierce skin.... but thats a real good question.

[Andreas958]

what is the gripper made of?

[NanoClips]

yes... more is coming up, we just completed some amazing experiments...

[billdale1]

Sorry, but you need to give some kind of scale-- how big are the grippers, and how thick is the nanowire? There's no way at all to guess. The nanowire could be just a few tens of nonometers, and the colors could have been introduced artifically, as is often done.

[NanoClips]

Thanks for pointing it out. It is a fairly large multiwalled carbon nanowire with a diameter of about 200 nm. The gripper is 200 micrometer long (0.2 mm) and the "shoulders" are about 15 micrometer if i remember correct. The colors are true enough - the film is recorded in an optical microscopy, and recorded with a color camera.

I hope this helps!

[billdale1]

Thanks for the clarification. You say it is a "fairly large... carbon nanowire"-- I believe that should read silicon nanowire.

I'm really surprised to know that something as small as 200 nm would be visible with an optical microscope. I would have expected you would have needed an electron microscope of some kind. How small would the nanowire have to be for it to be too small for an optical scope? Thanks for the images.

[billdale1]

one more thing-- what is the power at which the pictures were taken? As I recall, optical scopes do not have the ability to resolve images at anything greater than approximately 750 X due to the wavelength of the light used.

[NanoClips]

uupps, i certainly meant a silicon nanowire. Well - resolution has almost nothing to do with how small objects you can see in a microscope. Let me clarify (that was a bold statement!)... the resolution is about distinguishing TWO objects - for instance two nanotubes close to each others, or two stars on the nightsky. You can see the fluorescent light from a single molecule in an optical microscope, or a star on the nightsky, although they are both way smaller than the resolution

[NanoClips]

so... we have a pretty powerful microscope from Navitar. I dont remember the magnification, but we can see ONE nanotube with a diameter of about 30 nm, because it is long... that means that it is many microns large in one direction, and therefore scatter just enough light to be seen as a stripe in the microscope. We would not be able to see TWO nanotubes / nanowires with a distance smaller than about 200 nm though - it would look like 1 wide nanotube /nanowire.

[NanoClips]

But then again: i still think it is pretty cool to be able to see a nanotube with an optical microscope :)... we were as surprised as you when we found out how easy it was.

[NanoClips]

sorry to answer you this late; optical microscopes can resolve down to around the wavelength of light. However, the resolution is not really the limit here, but the light scattered from the nanotube. Even if the nanotube is smaller than the wavelength, it may still scatter some light, making it visible in the microscope. Just like you can see stars, even if their diameter is way, way smaller than what the eye can resolve - you can see them because they emit light.

[ondalolol]

Fantastic.

Love to see nanoworld

[nanotechworld]

wow

that was incredible keep posting