This new and important book presents significant research on carbon nanotubes (CNTs) which are allotropes of carbon with a nanostructure that can have a length-to-diameter ratio greater than 1,000,000. These cylindrical carbon molecules have novel properties that make them potentially useful in many applications in nanotechnology, electronics, optics and other fields of materials science, as well as extensive use in arcology and other architectural fields. They exhibit extraordinary strength and unique electrical properties, and are efficient conductors of heat.Inorganic nanotubes have also been synthesised. Nanotubes are members of the fullerene structural family, which also includes the spherical buckyballs. The cylindrical nanotube usually has at least one end capped with a hemisphere of the buckyball structure. Their name is derived from their size, since the diameter of a nanotube is in the order of a few manometres (approximately 1/50,000th of the width of a human hair), while they can be up to several millimetres in length (as of 2008). Nanotubes are categorized as single-walled nanotubes (SWNTs) and multi-walled nanotubes (MWNTs). |