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Carbon nanotube science and technology
Carbon nanotubes are molecular-scale tubes of graphitic carbon with outstanding properties. They are among the stiffest and strongest fibres known, and haveremarkable electronic properties and many other unique characteristics. For these reasons they have attracted huge academic and industrial interest, with thousands of papers on nanotubes being publishedevery year. Commercial applications have been rather slow to develop, however, primarily because of the high production costs of the best quality nanotubes.
History
The current huge interest incarbon nanotubes is a direct consequence of the synthesis of buckminsterfullerene, C60 , and other fullerenes, in 1985. The discovery that carbon could form stable, ordered structures other than graphiteand diamond stimulated researchers worldwide to search for other new forms of carbon. The search was given new impetus when it was shown in 1990 that C60 could be produced in a simple arc-evaporationapparatus readily available in all laboratories. It was using such an evaporator that the Japanese scientist Suimo Lejima discovered fullerene-related carbon nanotubes in 1991. The tubes contained atleast two layers, often many more, and ranged in outer diameter from about 3 nm to 30 nm. They were invariably closed at both ends.
A transmission electron micrograph of some multiwalled nanotubesis). In 1993, a new class of carbon nanotube was discovered, with just a single layer. These single-walled nanotubes are generally narrower than the multiwalled tubes, with diameters typically in therange 1-2 nm, and tend to be curved rather than straight. The image on the right shows some typical single-walled tubes It was soon established that these new fibres had a range of exceptionalproperties (see below), and this sparked off an explosion of research into carbon nanotubes. It is important to note, however, that nanoscale tubes of carbon, produced catalytically, had been known for many...