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Microwaves are a low-cost and reliable method to analyze the concentration of CNTS in biotic and abiotic samples representing a breakthrough in understanding nanotoxicology.
About
Agriculture in the United States uses thousands of chemicals every day. Many of these chemicals combine easily with organic carbon. As a result, farmers are increasingly interested in using carbon nanotubes as delivery mechanisms for agricultural pesticides. It is therefore important that we are able to evaluate the concentration of carbon nanotube taken into the roots of plants and their potential interactions with crop species and other organisms. The use of this microwave-heating technology effectively quantifies carbon nanotubes in plants and other biological samples in soil.
Key Benefits
- This microwave technology is inexpensive to develop and maintain. - The results it produces are repeatable, reliable, and may be applied to other biological and environmental samples other than agriculture. - The data that this method gathers will be useful to a wide range of scientists, from environmental chemists or engineers to government scientists who create or use nanotubes and are charged with ensuring the safety of this nanomaterial. - This technique will help researchers to determine concentrations of nanomaterials in toxicity studies.
Applications
The potential applications for nanotechnology detection are endless, and may have far-reaching effects in the realm of medicine, agrochemicals, and toxicology.