CSIRO in carbon credit

MELBOURNE: Research body CSIRO has been granted $2 million to investigate carbon based materials with the ability to enhance the body armour used by the Australian Defence Force.

The funding - granted under the Defence Capability and Technology Demonstrator (CTD) Program to investigate the capabilities of carbon nanotubes - would allow for improvements to available body armour, which was heavy, stiff and hot to wear, confirmed CSIRO Textile and Fibre Technology principal research scientist Stephen Hawkins.

"Generations of polymers and ceramics have been developed to keep pace with the threat and lessen the burden of the armour but now a new material - carbon nanotubes or CNTs - is set to move ballistic protection into new territory," he said.

With CSIRO's Carbon Nanotubes for Ballistic Protection project selected as part of the latest round of Defence CTD Program funding and announced last night, Hawkins described the technology as part of an exciting new wave of nano-structured materials.

"The challenge is to capture the potential of these new materials at the macro level. CNTs are fibres of pure carbon that are only one to 100 nanometres in diametre. Synthesising and manipulating these myriad tiny fibres into ordered structures requires a combination of novel processing skills coupled with a fundamental understanding of fibre behaviour," he said.