Nanotechnology’s Wonder Material: Synthesis of Carbon Nanotubes - Hierarchical Nanostructures for Energy Devices - page 26

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CHAPTER 3
Nanotechnology's Wonder
Material: Synthesis of Carbon
Nanotubes

JUNG BIN IN* a AND ALEKSANDR NOY* b

a Mechanical Engineering, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley,
California 94720, U.S.A.; b Physics and Life Sciences Directorate, Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California 94550, U.S.A.
*Email: [e-mail]; [e-mail]

3.1 Introduction

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3.1.1 Carbon Nanotubes: General Overview
By now the carbon nanotube (CNT) has firmly established its place as a
nanoscience icon and the foundation of many scientific and (increasingly
nowadays) technological breakthroughs. 1 Despite having a very simple
chemical composition—it is just another allotropic form of carbon—
nanotubes have an astonishing variety of unique properties. A carbon
nanotube is simply a nanometre-sized rolled-up graphene sheet that forms a
perfect seamless cylinder (Figure 3.1) capped at the ends by fullerene caps.
The structure of a simple one-shell carbon nanotube is fully defined by its
roll-up vector (n,m), called chirality or helicity, which defines the position of
the matched carbon rings during the roll-up of the graphene sheet. 2
Significantly, this roll-up vector fully defines the nanotube morphology,