Nanotubes on membranes
Jamie and I met with Don Black with an electron microscopist that consults for NaturalNano. In efforts to test out our TEM window grids, he gave us halloysite nanotubes. These are naturally occuring and much larger than the carbon nanotubes we normally talk about. The samples were prepared in 0.5% Triton X-100 in water and sonicated in the water bath for 2 mins. There was still significant clumping – also tried Methanol (w/o surfactant) with similar results. Both samples showed a thin film across the pores, that we concluded could not have been Triton, but must have been from the halloysite.
We also saw a few odd contiminants.
Microscopy credit: Dave Fang!