Nanotubes – the quick guide

Carbon-60, the basis of carbon nanotubes.
Picture courtesy Nobel e-Museum

Carbon nanotubes are one of the more promising aspects of C60 chemistry. The new physical form of the element carbon discovered in 1985 won the 1996 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for its discoverers, Harry Kroto, Robert Curl and Richard Smalley, who died on 28 October this year in Houston.

What is it? | The technology | Where's the buzz? | Any money in this?

What is it?

C60, sometimes called Buckminsterfullerene, shortened to fullerenes, because it looks like the architect’s geodesic domes, is a ball of 60 carbon atoms. C60 adds to diamond and graphite as the known forms of carbon.

You can almost certainly find C60 in nature, maybe in soot. But no one thought to look for something that weird.

Nanotubes, or buckytubes, are long cage-like tubes of carbon, about one millionth of a millimetre across. The first reports of carbon nanotubes, CNT for short, appeared in 1991. They were first reported by Sumio Iijima of NEC. Described by some as "maybe the most significant spin-off product of fullerene research", you can now buy nanotubes off the shelf.

The Quick Guides

Scientists love to complicate things; and if you're not in the same field, or - worse - are in business or investment, it's easy to get lost. So periodically, Science|Business presents Quick Guides to some of the hottest fields of science and technology.

The technology

Nanotubes are finding their ways into everything from bicycles to electronic circuits, well that’s the idea.

Nanotubes appeal because they are a hundred times stronger than steel, but a sixth the weight. They are good at conducting heat and electricity. They also have interesting electronic properties. And you can wrap them round other molecules to create interesting chemistry.

One idea for nanotubes is that they can take over from copper as a conductor in integrated circuits. Moving signals around chips is something of a bottleneck, and one that heats up. That threatens to bring Moore's law - the one about chips doubling their performance every 18 months - to a grinding halt. CNT "nanowires" may be a way out.

Intel is interested in this, and in using CNTs as transistors. IBM too.

It may take time for CNTs to sit doing electronic things alongside silicon on chips, but before that they could perform more mundane tasks - as a filler that makes the adhesives used in electronics conduct electricity and heat.

CNTs also feature in another going-places technology, fuel cells. (Think hydrogen-powered cars.)

Then there are those ideas about bicycles, golf clubs and other expensive sports kit. Dose polymers with CNTs and, the argument goes, you get incredibly strong lightweight composite materials.

Zyvex is one of the companies in this area. As well as bicycles, its CNT stuff has gone into hockey sticks and baseball bats.

Where's the buzz?

Spinouts are already appearing. Nanocyl, founded in February 2002, emerged from the universities of Namur and Liege (Belgium) with the aim "to develop new business for the supply of specialty carbon nanotubes". It has become one of the big producers of CNTs.

There's also a patent torrent under way. Earlier this year we read reports of more than 3,800 US nanotechnology patents, with another 1,777 patent applications pending.

Much as the patents show that there's a lot of life out there, they also show that there could be trouble ahead as anyone planning to use CNTs tries to work out who really owns their technology.

Any money in this?

There’s money in the bank if you make CNTs. At around $1 or $2 a gram, you can turn a quick profit. Research and Markets, a market-research business based in Dublin, says that 65 tons of nanotubes and fibres were produced in 2004 "which equates at manufacturer's current prices to €144 million worth. By 2010 this figure will surpass €3 billion."

There are even products out there containing CNTs. Cientifica, which describes itself as "the world's leading nanotechnology information company", says that "currently 50% of all lithium batteries incorporate carbon nanofibers which double their energy capacity".

The patents flood could bite potential users of CNTs though. The ETC Group of environmentalists keeps its eye on IPR issues - they got stirred up about the rights to GM seeds. Earlier this year the group put out a report highlighting that ownership of many of the key patents rests in the hands of the usual suspects. Their line is that "in those countries where the patents are recognised, it is virtually impossible to make or use materials, devices and systems based on carbon nanotubes without infringing a swarm of existing patents – whose claims are often broad, overlapping and conflicting".

Some naysayers - well, realists - say that it will be a decade before anyone makes real money out of applications of CNTs. In the meantime, make CNTs, or the kit needed to work with them, or get some development contracts, and you could be far from down the tubes.