Seeds and Carbon Nanotubes...

This illustration shows how a seed molecule on a platinum surface (left) will accumulated carbon atoms by growing upwards to create a single-walled carbon nanotube with a specific structure. (Courtesy: Juan Ramon Sanchez-Valencia)

The first effective technique for growing a batch of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) that all have the same molecular structure has been developed by scientists in Switzerland. The new process involves using "seed molecules" on a platinum substrate to grow SWCNTs with the desired structure. The breakthrough could be extremely important to those developing electronic devices based on SWCNTs because nanotubes with different structures can have very different electronic properties.

An SWCNT can be thought of as an atomically thin sheet of carbon that has been rolled up to form a tube about 1 nm thick, resembling a drinking straw. The carbon sheet always has the same honeycomb structure, which it shares with graphene. However, there are about a hundred different ways that the edges of the sheet can join together to make a tube, and this defines whether an SWCNT conducts electricity like a metal or a semiconductor. In the case of semiconducting nanotubes, the size of the electronic band gap also depends on how the edges are joined.

Electronic devices based on SWCNTs could, in principle, be used to create transistors and other components that are smaller, faster and more energy efficient than those based on silicon. But before that can happen, scientists have to come up with reliable ways of producing batches of SWCNTs with identical structures.

Physics World: Molecular seeds sprout identical carbon nanotubes