Image copyright Getty Images A innocent leaf of spinach could reach to save your life.
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, for its acronym in English), in the USA, just find the way to transform the vegetable into a detector of bombs.
When you embed a tiny tubes in the leaves of the spinach, ensured that they were able to identify substances chemicaltos -nitro compounds aromatic – that are used for the manufacture of explosives, such as those located in minefields and ammunition buried in it.
But in addition to these “plants nanobiónicas” (so called scientists) can send real time information wirelessly to equipment manuals, explains the scholars in the journal Nature Materials.
What makes it possible for this technology and how it works?
carbon Nanotubes
The answer is in the nanoparticle and carbon nanotubes (tiny cylinders of carbon) that the scientists implanted in the leaves of the plants of spinach.
they Are a kind of hollow cylinders of extremely small, whose walls are formed by carbon atoms that make up a network of hexagons.
it Is an innovative technology with “excellent electrical conductivity”, told the BBC World Cesar Miranda-Reyes, a researcher at the Department of Materials of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
When the plant detects chemical components of explosives in the underground water that comes up to it, the carbon nanotubes emit a fluorescent signal to nearly infrared.
And the researchers can interpret the signal thanks to a small infrared camera that is connected to a minicomputer Raspberry Pi (or to a smart phone, if we remove the infrared filter that have the majority of them).
TNT and other chemical weapons
The co-author of the study, Michael Strano, professor of chemical engineering at MIT, says that the relevance of this work lies in that it constitutes an important proof-of-principle.
“Our work describes how you might use this type of engineering on the plants to detect virtually any thing,” said Strano, a correspondent of science-BBC Paul Rincon.
In fact, this is one of the first demonstrations of how you can successfully integrate electronic systems in the plant.
In his lab, Strano and his colleagues developed (two years ago) carbon nanotubes, which can be used as sensors to detect hydrogen peroxide, TNT and sarin gas, a powerful nerve agent that some governments use as a chemical weapon.
In that moment, Strano said that the plants can become “technological platforms very appealing.”
“These plants can be used for defence applications, but also to monitor public spaces on activities related to terrorism, because we report the detection by water but also through the air,” says Strano.
“they Could monitor the groundwater of munitions buried or wastes containing nitro-aromatic”.
The applications go beyond defence and security. For example, can be used to help solve environmental problems, detecting drought quickly and other anomalies of soil and water.
The plants nanobiónicas allow scientists to capture signals located up to a meter of distance of the same.
The next goal is to extend this distance range so as to give more power to those leaves of spinach, which, although it may not appear so at first glance, to have little of the innocent.
No comments:
Post a Comment