A great discovery by scientists from the Department of Organic Chemistry, Bioorganic Chemistry and Biotechnology
A team of scientists from the Department of Organic Chemistry, Bioorganic Chemistry and Biotechnology at the Faculty of Chemistry of the Silesian University of Technology has made an extraordinary discovery. Researchers have synthesized polymers that until recently were very expensive. This will help to facilitate research in many scientific disciplines, including nanomedicine and telecommunications.
Dr hab. Eng. Dawid Janas, prof. of the Silesian University of Technology leads a team that, thanks to grants from the National Science Centre and NAWA, conducts research on polymers and nanotubes. The results of the research turned out to be groundbreaking.
- Thanks to the synergistic combination of competences in the field of polymer chemistry and nanomaterials, we have made a breakthrough in the purification of single-walled carbon nanotubes, which opens the way to the use of these very promising materials in many branches of the economy, such as nanomedicine, telecommunications and microelectronics. Single-walled carbon nanotubes are obtained in the form of mixtures containing several to several types of nanotubes with different properties. In order to enable their use in industry, such a complex mixture should be separated into prime factors - explains dr Eng. Dawid Janas, prof. SUT. The scientist adds that these nanotubes are very small (diameter in the range of one billionth of a meter), which makes their purification a big challenge.
- In my group, we received a wide spectrum of polymers, which we tested for the possibility of purification of such mixtures. We discovered that one of the obtained polymers has an unusual tendency to wrap around only one type of nanotubes (those of the smallest size) out of a dozen or so, thanks to which we separated this nanomaterial and demonstrated its great application potential, adds dr hab. Eng. Janas.
The complicated procedure has led to important conclusions, thanks to which scientists from around the world will be able to use this solution in their own research. The achievement is interdisciplinary in nature, as carbon nanotubes have a wide spectrum of potential applications affecting many areas of science. - We are convinced that the simplicity of the proposed method will significantly improve research on this nanomaterial by scientists from around the world - adds dr Eng. Janas.
A great advantage of this achievement is also the fact that using innovative synthesis techniques developed by a group of researchers from the Silesian University of Technology in recent years, it is possible to obtain polymers for research in a relatively inexpensive way, even ten times cheaper than before.
