Nanomaterial Safety on a Nano Budget

With a little practice, it doesn’t take much more than 10 minutes, a couple of bags and a big bucket to keep nanomaterials in their place.

The Rice University lab of chemist Andrew Barron works with bulk carbon nanotubes on a variety of projects. Years ago, members of the lab became concerned that nanotubes could escape into the air, and developed a cheap and clean method to keep them contained as they were transferred from large containers into jars for experimental use.

More recently Barron himself became concerned that too few labs around the world were employing best practices to handle nanomaterials. He decided to share what his Rice team had learned.

“There was a series of studies that said if you’re going to handle nanotubes, you really need to use safety protocols,” Barron said. “Then I saw a study that said many labs didn’t use any form of hood or containment system. In the U.S., it was really bad, and in Asia it was even worse. But there are a significant number of labs scaling up to use these materials at the kilogram scale without taking the proper precautions.”

The lab’s inexpensive method is detailed in an open-access paper in the Springer Nature journal SN Applied Sciences.

In bulk form, carbon nanotubes are fluffy and disperse easily if disturbed. The Rice lab typically stores the tubes in 5-gallon plastic buckets, and simply opening the lid is enough to send them flying because of their low density.