Introducing Carbon nanotubes the future of maybe everything we use. Carbon nanotubes are unique nanostructures with remarkable electronic and mechanical properties. Interest from the research community first focused on their exotic electronic properties, since nanotubes can be considered as prototypes for a one-dimensional quantum wire. As other useful properties have been discovered, particularly strength, interest has grown in potential applications. Carbon nanotubes could be used, for example, in nanometre-sized electronics or to strengthen polymer materials. An ideal nanotube can be thought of as a hexagonal network of carbon atoms that has been rolled up to make a seamless cylinder. Just a nanometre across, the cylinder can be tens of microns long, and each end is “capped” with half of a fullerene molecule. Single-wall nanotubes can be thought of as the fundamental cylindrical structure, and these form the building blocks of both multi-wall nanotubes and the ordered arrays of single-wall nanotubes called ropes. Many theoretical studies have predicted the properties of single-wall nanotubes. It appears that the first carbon filaments of nanometre dimensions were prepared in the 1970s by Morinobu Endo, as part of his PhD studies at the University of Orleans in France. He grew carbon fibres about 7 nm […]