Carbon nanotubes are among the stiffest and strongest fibers known, and have remarkable electronic properties. They exhibit extraordinary strength, unique electrical properties, efficient thermal conduction properties, and exhibit many other unique characteristics.For more information on characteristics go to: http://www.personal.reading.ac.uk/~scsharip/tubes.htm . As devices continue to shrink further into the sub-100 nanometer range following the trend predicted by Moore’s law , the topic of thermal properties and transport in such nano-scale devices becomes increasingly more important. Nanotube cost, limitations in processing, and assembly methods are significant barriers in their mass production.
The name nanotube directly corresponds to their size. The diameter of a nanotube is equivalent to only a few nanometers (approximately 1/50,000th of the width of a human hair). Though they are so small in diameter, they can be up to 18 centimeters in length. Carbon nanotubes or (CNTs) are allotropes of carbon that possess a cylindrical nanostructure and should not be confused with carbon fibers. Nanotubes are constructed with a length-to-diameter ratio of up to 132,000,000:1, which is significantly larger than any other known material. These cylindrical carbon molecules have diverse properties that make them potentially useful in many applications such as nanotechnology, electronics, optics, architectural applications, and many other fields of material science. Commercial applications have been rather slow to develop, primarily because of the high production costs of the finest quality nanotubes.
The vast interest in carbon nanotubes began in the 1985 with the creation of buckminsterfullerene, C60, and other fullerenes. Nanotubes are members of the fullerene structural family, which also includes the spherical buckyballs. Scientists discovered that carbon could form stable, ordered structures other than graphite and diamonds. The aforementioned discovery encouraged scientists to search for new alternative forms of carbon. The search was continued in 1990 when it was discovered that C60 could be created in a simple arc-evaporation apparatus that was readily available in most laboratories. It was by using such an evaporator that Japanese scientist; Sumio Iijima discovered fullerene-related carbon nanotubes in 1991. The tubes contained at least two layers, often many more, and ranged in outer diameter from about 3 nm to 30 nm.