March 29, 2024
Carbon Nano Tubes

Carbon nanotubes look like rolled graphite sheets with nanometer diameters and micrometer lengths. They are unique materials that have outstanding chemical, electrical, optical and many other properties that are suitable for improving many products and even for creating new ones. There are several uses of this unique product that can obtain important benefits to incorporate carbon nanotubes.

Composite materials have nanotubes. This product is widely used in sectors like mechanics, biotech, photonics chemical, and other industries.

Types of Carbon Nanotubes

Let’s check out the most important types of carbon nanotubes.

Single Wall Carbon Nanotubes (SWCNT – Single Wall Carbon Nanotubes)

These are made up of carbon atoms arranged in a cylindrical hexagonal network so that their structure is the same one that would be obtained if a sheet of carbon were rolled on itself. graphite. Their ends may be closed by half a fullerene sphere or they may be open.

 MWCNT

Multiwalled carbon nanotubes or MWCNT have a structure similar to several concentric SWCNTs with different diameters. In both cases, its main characteristic, which will give rise to a number of exceptional properties, is that they show a very high length/diameter ratio.

Carbon Nano Tubes

Their diameter is of the order of nanometers and their length can vary from a few microns to millimeters and even some centimeters. The MWCNT were discovered in 1991 by Sumio Iijima, a Japanese engineer from the NEC company.

From the beginning, they showed important quantum effects due to their almost one-dimensional structure, which encouraged many scientists to work on them. The SWCNT were discovered two years later by the Iijima group at NEC and by another group at the IBM Almaden Laboratory.

From their discovery, the scientists looked for the way to produce them in the laboratory. Since then much progress has been made in the different methods of synthesis that have emerged, as well as in those of characterization, purification, and separation.

From their discovery, the scientists looked for the way to produce them in the laboratory. Since then much progress has been made in the different methods of synthesis that have emerged, as well as in those of characterization, purification, and separation.  From the beginning, the theory predicted exceptional properties for carbon nanotubes, which could be tested experimentally as scientific instrumentation has evolved. The properties are different in SWCNT and MWCNT. They depend strongly on their dimensions (diameter and length) and on the defects present in the nanotube (vacancies or impurities occupying the place of a carbon atom, deformations, inclinations). However, they also depend on the way in which the hexagons of the graphite sheet are arranged, that is, how the hypothetical sheet of graphite that would give rise to our nanotube would be wound up. The exceptional mechanical, thermal, electrical, chemical and optical properties of carbon nanotubes enable them to be used in a multitude of applications: electronics, sensors, scientific instrumentation, photonics, materials, biotechnology, chemistry, energy, mechanics … Perhaps the most important electrical property of the carbon nanotubes that determines their use in electronics is that they can be metallic or semiconductor, depending on the way in which the graphite sheet would be rolled.

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