Carbon Nanotubes Shown to be Able to Produce Powerful Energy Waves

You can read exactly what it is quoted below. The important take away from the technology is that there could be a serious upgrade to batteries coming down the pipe. The technology presented could be 100 times more effective, and significantly more reliable for long term storage before use. It may be a bit away, but at least we are now headed down this new technological path.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/thermopower-waves-0308

"A team of scientists at MIT have discovered a previously unknown phenomenon that can cause powerful waves of energy to shoot through minuscule wires known as carbon nanotubes. The discovery could lead to a new way of producing electricity, the researchers say.

The phenomenon, described as thermopower waves, “opens up a new area of energy research, which is rare,” says Michael Strano, MIT’s Charles and Hilda Roddey Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering ...

Like a collection of flotsam propelled along the surface by waves traveling across the ocean, it turns out that a thermal wave — a moving pulse of heat — traveling along a microscopic wire can drive electrons along, creating an electrical current.

The key ingredient in the recipe is carbon nanotubes — submicroscopic hollow tubes made of a chicken-wire-like lattice of carbon atoms. These tubes, just a few billionths of a meter (nanometers) in diameter, are part of a family of novel carbon molecules, including buckyballs and graphene sheets, that have been the subject of intensive worldwide research over the last two decades."