materialsscienceandengineering:
Nano-coating makes coaxial cables lighter
Scientists replace metal with carbon nanotubes for aerospace use
Common coaxial cables could be made 50 percent lighter with a new nanotube-based outer conductor developed by Rice University scientists.
The Rice lab of Professor Matteo Pasquali has developed a coating that could replace the tin-coated copper braid that transmits the signal and shields the cable from electromagnetic interference. The metal braid is the heaviest component in modern coaxial data cables.
The research appears this month in the American Chemical Society journalACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.
Replacing the outer conductor with Rice’s flexible, high-performance coating would benefit airplanes and spacecraft, in which the weight and strength of data-carrying cables are significant factors in performance.
Rice research scientist Francesca Mirri, lead author of the paper, made three versions of the new cable by varying the carbon-nanotube thickness of the coating. She found that the thickest, about 90 microns – approximately the width of the average human hair – met military-grade standards for shielding and was also the most robust; it handled 10,000 bending cycles with no detrimental effect on the cable performance.
Why are we still using co-ax cables?
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