Tags: carbon nanotubes

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Description

100 amps of electricity crackle in a vacuum chamber, creating a spark that transforms carbon vapor into tiny structures. Depending on the conditions, these structures can be shaped like little, 60-atom soccer balls, or like rolled-up tubes of atoms, arranged in a chicken-wire pattern, with rounded ends. These tiny, carbon nanotubes, discovered by Sumio Iijima at NEC labs in 1991, have amazing properties. They are 100 times stronger than steel, but weigh only one-sixth as much. They are incredibly resilient under physical stress; even when kinked to a 120-degree angle, they will bounce back to their original form, undamaged. And they can carry electrical current at levels that would vaporize ordinary copper wires.

Learn more about carbon nanotubes from the many resources on this site, listed below. More information on Carbon nanotubes can be found here.

Animations (1-9 of 9)

  1. Making a Self-Cleaning Anti-Scale Coating for Water Treatment Systems

    21 Aug 2022 | | Contributor(s):: Mariana Quinn, Rice University, NEWT Center

    How are Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs) used in water treatment? This research focuses on harnessing the electrical properties of Carbon Nanotubes in order to create a coat that prevents scale and biofilm buildup in water treatment systems.

  2. Optical Property of Single Wall Carbon Nanotube

    20 Aug 2022 | | Contributor(s):: Usha Devathosh, Rice University

    What are the optical properties of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes? Single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) are 1D cylindrical nanomaterials that resemble a rolled up graphene sheet and have many interesting properties, including the strong fluorescence emission of semi-conducting SWCNTs in the...

  3. In-situ Carbon Nanotube Bending Tests

    02 Jun 2013 | | Contributor(s):: Brian Demczyk

    This video shows a series of in-situ TEM bending manipulations on carbon nanotubes, demonstrating the remarkable flexibility of these materials.

  4. In-situ carbon nanotube tensile test

    07 Oct 2011 | | Contributor(s):: Brian Demczyk

    This represents the first in-situ tensile test observed in a transmission electron microscope.

  5. Carbon nanotube bandstructure

    22 Apr 2010 | | Contributor(s):: Saumitra Raj Mehrotra, Gerhard Klimeck

    Carbon nanotubes are allotropes of carbon with a cylindrical nanostructure, and can be categorized into single-walled nanotubes (SWNT) and multi-walled nanotubes (MWNT). These cylindrical carbon molecules have novel properties that make them potentially useful in many nanotechnology applications,...

  6. Crystal Viewer Demonstration: Bravais Lattices

    12 Jun 2009 | | Contributor(s):: Gerhard Klimeck, Benjamin P Haley

    This video shows the exploration of several crystal structures using the Crystal Viewer tool. Several powerful features of this tool are demonstrated.

  7. Crystal Viewer Demonstration: Bravais Lattices 2

    12 Jun 2009 | | Contributor(s):: Gerhard Klimeck, Benjamin P Haley

    This video shows the exploration of several crystal structures using the Crystal Viewer tool. Several powerful features of this tool are demonstrated

  8. Crystal Viewer Demonstration: Various Crystal Systems

    12 Jun 2009 | | Contributor(s):: Gerhard Klimeck, Benjamin P Haley

    This video shows the use of the Crystal Viewer Tool to visualize several crystal systems, including Si, GaAs, C60 Buckyball, and a carbon nanotube. Crystal systems are rotated in 3D, zoomed in and out, and the lattice style changes from sticks and balls to lines to spheres.

  9. 3D Molecular Models

    out of 5 stars 

    21 Jun 2007 | | Contributor(s):: Nicholas Vargo

    This animation was created as part of the Children's Museum Nanotechnology Exhibit to give the viewer an idea of what objects look like at the nano-level. The molecules range from something as small as caffeine to major proteins and viruses.