Carbon nanotubes

In 1991 Iijima Sumio of NEC Corporation’s Fundamental Research Laboratory, Tsukuba Science City, Japan, investigated material extracted from solids that grew on the tips of carbon electrodes after being discharged under C₆₀ formation conditions. Iijima found that the solids consisted of tiny tubes made up of numerous concentric “graphene” cylinders, each cylinder wall consisting of a sheet of carbon atoms arranged in hexagonal rings. The cylinders usually had closed-off ends and ranged from 2 to 10 micrometres (millionths of a metre) in length and 5 to 40 nanometres (billionths of a metre) in diameter. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy later revealed that these multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) are seamless and that the spacings between adjacent layers is about 0.34 nanometre, close to the spacing observed between sheets of graphite. The number of concentric cylinders in a given tube ranged from 3 to 50, and the ends were generally capped by fullerene domes that included pentagonal rings (necessary for closure of the tubes). It was soon shown that single-walled nanotubes (SWNTs) could be produced by this method if a cobalt-nickel catalyst was used. In 1996 a group led by Smalley produced SWNTs in high purity by laser vaporization of carbon impregnated with cobalt and nickel. These nanotubes are essentially elongated fullerenes.

Individual carbon nanotubes may be metallic or semiconducting, depending on the helical orientation of the rows of hexagonal rings in the walls of the tubes. Rather than conducting electricity via electron transport, a diffusive process that results in electron scattering and conductive heating, SWNTs exhibit ballistic transport, a highly efficient and fast conduction process in which electrons, prevented from diffusing through the wall of the tube or around its circumference by the regular hexagonal array of carbon atoms, propagate rapidly along the axis of the tube. Open-ended SWNTs emit electrons at currents that attain approximately 100 nanoamperes (billionths of an ampere). Owing to such remarkable properties, electrical conductors made of bundles of nanotubes should exhibit zero energy loss. Aligned MWNTs show promise as field-emission devices with potential applications in electronic flat-panel displays. Nanotubes may also be used as highly resilient probe tips for scanning tunneling microscopes and atomic force microscopes.

Carbon nanotubes exhibit faster phonon transport than diamond, which was previously recognized as the best thermal conductor, and the electric current-carrying capacity of nanotubes is approximately four orders of magnitude higher than that of copper. The Young’s modulus of MWNTs (a measure of their elasticity, or ability to recover from stretching or compression) is estimated by researchers to be greater than that of carbon fibres by a factor of 5 to 10. MWNTs are capable of readily absorbing loads via a sequence of reversible elastic deformations, such as buckling or kinking, in which the bonds between carbon atoms remain intact.

Nanotubes can be “decapped” by oxidation and the resulting opened tubes filled with metals, such as lead, or even with buckyballs. Boron and nitrogen atoms may be incorporated into carbon nanotube walls. Microscopic metal particles that would otherwise be rapidly oxidized may be stabilized in air by encapsulation in nanotube skins.

Potential applications of fullerenes

The discovery of C₆₀ has led to a paradigm shift in the understanding of graphite, in particular graphene sheets on a small scale. It is now known that the most stable form of a carbon aggregate, containing tens to several thousands of atoms, is a closed buckyball or nanotube. This new understanding is not restricted to pure carbon but also applies to other sheet-forming materials such as boron nitride, which can also form nanotubes. Closed fullerene structures, incorporating sulfides of such metals as tungsten and molybdenum, exhibit excellent solid-lubricant properties. Conducting carbon nanotubes may be coated with sheaths of metal sulfides to produce tiny insulated electrical wire.

Fullerenes and nanotubes have engendered much excitement, especially with regard to possible future applications, but so far such applications have been few and far between. Nanotubes in particular may well bring about a revolution in materials science. For example, if SWNTs can be made in bundles of 100 billion, then a material will be produced that may approach the limits of tensile strength possible for any known material involving the chemical bond. In practice, no material approaches its theoretical “intrinsic strength,” because of breakdowns brought on by the propagation of microscopic defects through the material. A bundle of nanotubes, however, may bypass this problem, as microscopic defects may anneal along the length of a particular tube and certainly should not propagate across the bundle—thus avoiding the problems that occur in conventional materials. Estimates of potential tensile strength vary, but it is predicted that a 1-metre rod may reach 50 to 100 times the strength of steel at one-sixth the weight. The impact of such a material on civil engineering, building construction, aircraft, and automobiles would be spectacular. In order to realize this potential, however, new processes will have to be discovered that can produce long (more than 1 metre), perfectly ordered bundles in which all 100 billion nanotubes preferably have the same diameter and atomic arrangement. At present the technology to achieve this does not exist; indeed, it is not even obvious what strategy might be used to reach this goal. More realistically, carbon-nanotube composite materials exhibiting improved behaviour over standard carbon-fibre composites are likely in the near term. In addition, applications on a small scale should be feasible for medical purposes—for instance, the strength of individual nanotubes may prove useful in microsurgery or nanosurgery.