Research Review Electrical and mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes

Carbon nanotubes show a variety of fascinating properties interesting for both ba-sic physics research and industrial applications. By changing the wrapping angle the band gap is varied from a few eV to 0 eV making it possible to produce both semi-conducting and metallic nanotubes from the same material. Being a single molecule, nanotubes have displayed never before seen values of tensile strength up to 150 GPa which is about 30 times higher than the tensile strength of steel. The most common fabrication methods – arc discharge, laser ablation and Chemical Vapour Deposition (CVD) – are introduced and their advantages and disadvantages discussed. The carbon nanotube field effect transistor (TUBEFET) is presented as one of the most promising applications of nanotubes in the near future. After the discovery of the C60 buckminsterfullerene by Curl, Kroto and Smalley in 1985 [35] a lot of research has been undertaken on carbon structures. But it was only in 1991 that Sumo Iijima identified carbon nanotubes using an electron microscope [21]