Rice lab’s mix of nanoribbons, polymer has potential for cars, soda, beer A discovery at Rice University aims to make vehicles that run on compressed natural gas more practical. It might also prolong the shelf life of bottled beer and soda. The Rice lab of chemist James Tour has enhanced a polymer material to make it far more impermeable to pressurized gas and far lighter than the metal in tanks now used to contain the gas. A composite material created at Rice is nearly impervious to gas and may lead to efficient storage of compressed natural gas for vehicles. A 65-micrometer-wide polymer film, photographed edge-on with an electron microscope, contains a tiny amount of enhanced graphene nanoribbons that present gas molecules a “tortuous path” to escape. Image by Changsheng Xiang The combination could be a boon for an auto industry under pressure to market consumer cars that use cheaper natural gas. It could also find a market in food and beverage packaging. Tour and his colleagues at Rice and in Hungary, Slovenia and India reported their results this week in the online edition of the American Chemistry Society journal ACS Nano. By adding modified, single-atom-thick graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) to thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), the Rice lab made
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