Whether it's electric vehicles, drones, or spacecraft, a common technical challenge for future transportation is lightweighting.
Reducing the weight of a vehicle not only reduces energy consumption, but also increases battery efficiency and increases range. This is considered a key technology that is directly linked to sustainability, as it improves the performance of the system as a whole and thus contributes to reducing carbon emissions.
Electric motors in particular are an essential component of most electric mobility vehicles, and coils account for a large proportion of the total weight of the motor.
Until now, metals such as copper have been used as the main material for coils due to their high electrical conductivity, but it has been consistently pointed out that they have various limitations, such as difficulty in securing resources, price volatility, and weight problems due to high density.
Dr. Dae-Yoon Kim and his team at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) Composite Materials Research Institute have succeeded in constructing the coil of an electric motor using only carbon nanotubes (CNTs) without any metals, and realizing it to the point where it can actually run.
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