University of Leicester Researchers Use Nanoparticles for Producing Energy-Efficient Vehicle Components

Researchers at the University of Leicester are working to produce energy-efficient materials using nanotechnology.

Sinan Kandemir, a postgraduate researcher of the engineering department, is dealing with the production of robust and light-weight resistant materials using nano-additives. These materials can be used for manufacturing light-weight components in aerospace and automotive industry, thereby reducing energy-consumption and protecting the atmosphere from CO₂ emission. He uses an ultrasonic method, a unique processing technique, for dispersing aluminium-based nanoparticles uniformly into a liquid medium.

Kandemir stated that according to the European Commission and the Kyoto agreement, fossil fuel or finite oil resources can be preserved if automobile manufacturers produce light-weight vehicles that considerably reduce CO₂ emissions in air.

Even though the automobile manufacturers decide to replace the denser metal like steel with the lighter metals such as magnesium and aluminium, the strength of these materials is low. But the physical characteristics of these materials used in the production of automotive components can be altered by incorporating the nano-sized ceramic particles into the light-weight metals, he added.

Nano-composite materials render light-weight vehicles making it fuel-efficient and this helps in reducing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmospheric air, suggested Kandemir.