Top TechTop Tech #134: Starliner, superconductor, nanotube circuits
Important innovations in science and technology
By Paul Worthington
Thursday’s Top Tech:
• Boeing building “Starliner” for NASA
• Graphene superconductor
• Integrated circuits made with carbon nanotubes
Boeing building “Starliner” for NASA
Boeing is working on a commercial crew transportation spacecraft at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The CST-100 Starliner has “been designed with a focus on automated flight, reliable operation and frequent flights carrying NASA astronauts to the space station,” NASA says.
And not just astronauts: the vessels may also “take paying customers to the awe-inspiring heights of low-Earth orbit and the unique sensation of sustained weightlessness.”
The CST-100 will be assembled and processed for launch at the facility NASA had used for 20 years as a shuttle processing hangar, the space agency adds. The Starliner will launch on an Atlas V rocket.
Here
is the full announcement.
Sploid
has a good video here.
Graphene superconductor
We’ve had word of graphene semiconductors, but now coating graphene with lithium atoms has yielded the first single-layer superconducting sample.
Physicists at the University of British Columbia say their work may “usher us in a new era of graphene electronics and nanoscale quantum devices,” Kurzweil AI reports.
The lithium-decorated graphene was prepared :in ultra-high vacuum conditions and at ultra-low temperatures (-267 degrees Celsius or 5 Kelvin)… Scientists eventually hope to make very fast transistors, semiconductors, sensors, and transparent electrodes using graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb pattern.”
Integrated circuits made with carbon nanotubes
Transistors made from carbon nanotubes are faster and more energy-efficient and reliable than those made from other materials, Kurzweill AI says, but a microprocessor typically has a billion transistors, so making the leap to wafer-scale integrated circuits is a challenge.
Now Northwestern University engineers have developed “encapsulation layers” that protect carbon nanotubes from environmental degradation. The resulting integrated circuits “demonstrated a long lifetime” and can be left out in air with no further precautions.”
The promise: high-performance portable and wearable electronics, and smart cards embedded with personal information.
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