CNT-Cu boosted ampacity to 10,000 per cent

What is Ampacity?

Ampacity is the maximum amount of current a conductor can carry before losing its electrical properties. A large ampacity is vital to good performance. 

What's the News?

An Indian scientist from-Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan, has found that when carbon nanotubes are embedded in copper, the resulting new material’s ampacity gets boosted to a massive 10,000 per cent, with an electrical conductivity comparable to copper’s.

Other benefit of reinforcing Carbon Nano Tube into Copper:

Less Dense

(The new material, dubbed CNT-Cu (for carbon nanotubes–copper), consists of 45 per cent CNTs by volume, and is less dense than a pure copper conductor by 42 per cent.)

Problem:

Huge processing cost.

How CNT-Cu helps in attaining higher ampacity:

CNT-Cu achieves higher ampacity by suppressing electromigration that occurs in copper wires, where electrons are scattered off their path by copper atoms. 

In case of CNT-Cu, the negatively charged particles are channeled to move through a continuous mesh-like network formed by the nanotubes, averting scattering.