Please select all the ways you would like to hear from Northrop Grumman:

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our email. For information about our privacy practices, please visit our website.

We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By clicking the subscription below, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Northrop Grumman's privacy practices here.

Often, the small-scale or hidden technologies that make modern life work are the easiest to overlook—and those who discover them sometimes don't get the attention they deserve.

Sumio Iijima is a Japanese physicist and inventor. He was the first to clearly describe the formation of carbon nanotubes and imagine its potential. Iijima's 1991 discovery and subsequent work triggered a revolution in nanotechnology, which uses materials measured in nanometers (one billionth of a meter). Now, nanotechnology has become ubiquitous in modern life, used in electronic products, automobiles, medical equipment and more applications.

In 1939, Sumio Iijima was born in a rural village in Saitama Prefecture, which is now a suburb of Tokyo.

"I love nature," he explained when asked about his childhood in an NEC article. "I collect plants and insects, go fishing, and raise a group of small animals, including pigeons, rabbits, snakes, frogs, and crabs. I have learned a lot from my experience in contact with nature. I believe this helps me develop sensitivity and Insight. In high school and college, I participated in mountaineering clubs and music clubs, exploring nature in my youth and challenging the limits of my creativity."

With all these external interests, his classwork took a back seat during his growing years.

"My grades are not very good...because I have never studied," Iijima told Bloomberg. He ultimately failed the university entrance exam.

Iijima spent a year "reciting the facts" to pass the exam and was admitted to Tokyo Electronic Communication University. Iijima finds that the school's focus on communication engineering is not suitable for him. Iijima started his studies after transferring to a chemistry major in his final year.

"For the first time in my life, I study very hard," he told Bloomberg. He was admitted to a master's degree program by Northeastern University. According to the admissions interview, Iijima was placed in a laboratory dedicated to studying the atomic structure of materials using a high-resolution microscope.

"This interview determined the rest of my life," Iijima said. "At the time, I was not particularly eager to use electron microscopes for research, but I found myself very suitable for research in this field."

Iijima received a master's degree in 1965 and a doctorate in solid state physics in 1968, both of whom graduated from Tohoku University in Japan. From 1970 to 1982, he was a postdoctoral researcher and senior researcher at Arizona State University. There, he developed the high-resolution transmission electron microscope (HRTEM) in 1979 with the late Professor John M. Cowley. HRTEM can show the structure of the material down to the atomic level. At Arizona State University, Iijima studied the atomic structure of carbon. In 1979, he also served as a visiting senior scientist at the University of Cambridge, UK, using electron microscopes to study graphite. All these experiences, especially the development of HRTEM, will play a role in Iijima's discovery of nanotubes in 1991.

In 1982, Iijima returned to Japan and worked as a government employee at the Japan Research and Development Corporation (now the Japan Science and Technology Agency) to research ultrafine particles. In 1987, at the age of 47, he joined NEC in Tokyo as a researcher. As Iijima explained in an NEC article, he made the switch because the company "agreed to buy expensive high-performance electron microscopes." His initial work at NEC focused on cutting-edge semiconductor materials.

With his background in carbon structure, Iijima was inspired by the discovery of fullerenes (hollow nano-scale spheres of pure carbon) in 1985, which will win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996. The electron microscopy method developed with the help of Iijima revealed fullerenes. As he explained to Bloomberg, at an academic conference in 1990, Iijima joined a group that eventually discussed fullerenes into the night. After returning to Japan, Iijima immediately began to apply the method used to make fullerenes to his nanotube experiments.

Less than a year later, Iijima used his reliable electron microscope to observe the tiny carbon tubes stacked inside the tubes, which are multi-walled carbon nanotubes, which he described in his seminal 1991 "Nature" paper. These multi-walled nanotubes contain 2 to 50 graphite tubes with diameters up to 100 nanometers. In 1993, Iijima discovered that adding a metal catalyst would form single-walled carbon nanotubes. His later discoveries will reveal how carbon nanotubes are capped or intentionally unblocked with fullerenes, and how to prepare single-walled carbon nanotubes without toxic metal catalysts.

Carbon nanotubes are man-made materials that consist of flat sheets of pure carbon rolled into tubes as small as 0.8 nanometers in diameter. The length of the tube can reach several millimeters (1 millimeter = one million nanometers). Each carbon atom combines with three other carbon atoms to form a hexagonal arrangement, similar to a honeycomb. When placed on a flat plate, the hexagonal arrangement of carbon atoms forms graphite, which is a material used in everyday pencils. However, when the hexagonal carbon sheet forms a tube on the nanometer scale, it exhibits unique physical and chemical properties. These characteristics will vary with the diameter of the tube and the helical orientation of the hexagonal ring inside the tube.

According to Nawerk, these nanotubes are very light and strong-one-sixth of the density of steel, but 400 times the strength of steel. They are harder than diamond (another form of pure carbon) and are a better conductor of heat. Carbon nanotubes are chemically stable and very flexible. They can have extraordinary conductivity (1,000 times the conductivity of copper) or be used as semiconductors. The tiny space inside the tube can carry other nano-scale materials.

It is difficult to overestimate the impact of Iijima's Nature paper, which first described nanotubes in 1991. It is ranked 36th among the 100 most cited research papers in the history of Nature in 2014. Iijima has always been a prolific researcher, and he has always been a hot topic for the Nobel Prize in Physics or Chemistry. His awards and honors include the 2002 Japan Academy Award, the 2002 Benjamin Franklin Institute Physics Medal, the 2008 Navigli Nanoscience Award and the 2015 European Inventor Award. Microsoft Academic also attributed 755 publications and 144,885 citations to Iijima.

Iijima Sumio firmly believes that "new materials are only valuable when they are used." Although carbon nanotechnology has entered the market, it has not yet fully realized its potential. As explained by the European Patent Office, current products contain bulk nanotubes, which are a large number of disorganized nanotubes that are used as composite fibers to enhance mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties. These products include smartphone touchpads and a material called Vantablack, known as the darkest substance on earth, used in telescopes and cameras to absorb excess light.

As Iijima explained in an interview with NEC, "We need a technology that can orient and align the entangled braid of carbon nanotubes just made in the same direction" and allow mass production. Many companies and research institutions are developing nanotube materials and products, including lightweight but strong industrial materials (for example, for aircraft casings), small but powerful computer chips, ultra-compact fuel cells, high-efficiency power cords, and medicines The body of the drug delivery system that is delivered to the body. Sumio Iijima, who is only 82 years old, is still a leader in this nanotechnology research.

Are you interested in all things related to technology? So are we. Check out Northrop Grumman's career opportunities and learn how you can participate in this fascinating era of discovery.

The super melanin of deep-sea creatures such as arowana may open the way for the development of new technologies

Weather manipulation uses techniques such as cloud seeding to squeeze water from the cloud.

Advances in stealth technology provide career opportunities for engineers and other creative problem solvers. for...

The world of travel may be about to become faster through hypersonic speed,...

Quantum entanglement and teleportation are sci-fi technologies in real life. The scientist transmits a particle to orbit,...

Weather manipulation uses techniques such as cloud seeding to squeeze water from the cloud.

Is everything just advanced computer simulation? It's not without problems...