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A few potential applications of boron nitride nanotubes:
Energy harvester: BNNTs have promising piezoelectric properties. This means the material can generate an electrical current when under mechanical stress. This quality, which carbon nanotubes do not have, creates potential for a new class of self-powered sensors, motors and energy-generation devices designed to operate in harsh environments.
Transparent armour: BNNTs don’t absorb the visible part of the light spectrum, making it possible to create transparent composites for use in blast-proof, fire-resistant windshields for military vehicles, as well as in visors or lightweight, hand-held shields for soldiers. It would also protect against radiation. The Defence Department is working with the National Research Council on such innovations.
Fire-retardant products: Depending on their use, many types of insulation, product packaging and even clothing would be improved by being able to withstand fire and extreme temperatures. This is particularly true in the aerospace industry, where the weight of items being launched is directly correlated with rocket fuel consumption, and therefore cost.
Cancer killer: In a 2012 study that appeared in the journal Technology in Cancer Research & Treatment, researchers from Italy, working with NASA, found that adding tiny strands of BNNTs to tumours can help kill cancer cells. The nanotubes turbo-boosted a treatment option that uses short pulses of electricity to promote cell suicide. The researchers speculated that the BNNTs helped amplify the electric fields that killed cells.
Hydrogen storage: BNNTs have a tremendously high surface area. The larger the surface area, the more space there is for the nanotubes to bond with hydrogen and other molecules. Researchers speculate that this makes BNNTs an ideal candidate for efficiently storing large volumes of hydrogen — a clean-burning gas with potential to power a variety of vehicles using fuel cells.
Water desalination: Australian researchers reported in 2009 that BNNTs were highly effective at removing salt from water, compared with existing membranebased desalination systems. Tamsyn Hilder, a computational biophysics scientist at Australian National University, found that the material is capable of rejecting 100 per cent of the salt in a solution that’s twice as salty as seawater and it can do so when water is flowing four times faster than that in conventional desalination plants. BNNTs could lead to a “much faster and more efficient desalination process,” Hilder said.
Power generation: When lightly salted river water meets seawater, we know from Grade 10 chemistry that a process called osmosis is nature’s way of trying to balance the concentrations of each water source. To achieve balance, the water in the salt-free mixture wants to flow into the saltier mixture. When they are separated by a membrane that only water can pass through, flow between the two mixtures is measured as osmotic pressure. This pressure can be harnessed to generate clean electricity. In a 2013 paper published in the journal Nature, a team led by physicists at the Institut Lumière Matière and Institut Néel in France reported that osmotic flow through BNNTs produces electric currents with 1,000 times the efficiency of any previous system. Tyler Hamilton