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Carbon nanotubes are being developed to clean up oil spills. Researchers have found that adding boron atoms during the growth of carbon nanotubes causes the nanotubes to grow into a sponge like material that can absorb many times it's weight in oil. These nanotube sponges are made to be magnetic, which should make retrieval of them easier once they are filled with oil.

Carbon nanotubes can be used as the pores in membranes to run reverse osmosis desalination plants. Water molecules pass through the smoother walls of carbon nanotubes more easily than through other types of nanopores, which requires less power. Other researchers are using carbon nanotubes to develope small, inexpensive water purification devices needed in developing countries.

Sensors using carbon nanotube detection elements are capable of detecting a range of chemical vapors. These sensors work by reacting to the changes in the resistance of a carbon nanotube in the presence of a chemical vapor.

Researchers at the Technische Universität München have demonstrated a method of spraying carbon nanotubes onto flexible plastic surfaces to produce sensors. The researchers believe that this method could produce low cost sensors on surfaces such as the plastic film wrapping food, so that the sensor could detect spoiled food.

An inexpensive nanotube-based sensor can detect bacteria in drinking water. Antibodies sensitive to a particular bacteria are bound to the nanotubes, which are then deposited onto a paper strip. When the bacteria is present it attaches to the antibodies, changing the spacing between the nanotubes and the resistance of the paper strip containing the nanotubes.

Carbon nanotubes tipped with gold nanoparticles can be used to trap oil drops polluting water. Since the gold end is attracted to water while the carbon end is attracted to oil. Therefore the nanotubes form spheres surrounding oil droplets with the carbon end pointed in, toward the oil, and the gold end pointing out, toward the water.

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Industry applications of carbon nanotubes

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Industry applications of carbon nanotubes

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Some people believe that nanotubes are one of nanotech’s most promising molecular building blocks because they exhibit unique properties with a wide range of potential commercial applications. Industry enthusiasts believe that carbon nanotubes will radically improve the performance of tiny sensors, electronic and optical devices, catalysts, batteries, fuel cells, solar cells and drug delivery vehicles. Currently 50% of all lithium batteries incorporate carbon nanofibers (wires spun from carbon nanotubes), which double their energy capacity. Some predict that nano-scale carbon transistors will replace silicon transistors within the next decade. Nanotubes are already used in tennis rackets to make them stronger and lighter. Fortifying a bulletproof vest with a small quantity of nanotubes could double its ability to absorb the energy of a bullet. One company is developing carbon nanotubes to make plastics fire retardant. Carbon nanotubes are capable of storing up to 65 percent of their weight in hydrogen - a capacity that could someday make hydrogen fuel cells a cheap and efficient alternative to fossil fuels. Scientists at Rice University are developing a new type of wire made of carbon nanotubes that conducts electricity much better than copper, and could transform the electrical power grid.

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Apart from remarkable tensile strength, nanotubes exhibit varying electrical properties (depending on the way the graphite structure spirals around the tube, and other factors, such as doping), and can be superconducting, insulating, semiconducting or conducting (metallic). Nanotubes can be either electrically conductive or semiconductive, depending on their helicity, leading to nanoscale wires and electrical components. These one-dimensional fibers exhibit electrical conductivity as high as copper, thermal conductivity as high as diamond, strength 100 times greater than steel at one sixth the weight, and high strain to failure. They have a thermal conductivity higher than diamond, greater mechanical strength than steel – orders of magnitude by weight – and better electrical conductivity than copper.

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The next step in nanotechnology | George Tulevski

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Nanotechnology refers to the science and engineering of particles that are on the nanoscale, which is are about 1 to 100 nanometers (nm) in size. For comparison, the thickness of a sheet of paper is about 100,000 nm and the width of a hair, about 40,000 – 80,000 nm. Materials that exhibit a dimension below 100 nm have very different and interesting properties than the bulk material.  As an example, gold is a very inert metal, but below 100 nm, nanoparticles of gold possess properties that make them good catalysts and sensors.  With opportunities ranging from aerospace and defense to medical to sporting goods, nanotechnology will the change the face of innovation for generations to come.

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Video from Nova s38e09 showing impressive production of long carbon nanotube strands.

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Buckyballs are short for (Buckminster Fullerenes) are a special form of carbon first discovered in a lab. They are 60 carbon atoms linked together but have different consistencies like 20 atoms, 32 atoms, 100 atoms etc.They are really strong and good conductors of electricity. Chemists are currently exploring ways of using them like incredibly tiny machines, for example, to carry molecules of medicine to specific areas of the human body and even curing life-threatening diseases.

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A one dimensional fullerene (a convex cage of atoms with only hexagonal and/or pentagonal faces) with a cylindrical shape. Carbon nanotubes discovered in 1991 by Sumio Iijima resemble rolled up graphite, although they can not really be made that way. Depending on the direction that the tubes appear to have been rolled (quantified by the 'chiral vector'), they are known to act as conductors or semiconductors. Nanotubes are a proving to be useful as molecular components for nanotechnology.

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Conceptually, single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) can be considered to be formed by the rolling of a single layer of graphite (called a graphene layer) into a seamless cylinder. A multiwall carbon nanotube (MWCNT) can similarly be considered to be a coaxial assembly of cylinders of SWCNTs, like a Russian doll, one within another; the separation between tubes is about equal to that between the layers in natural graphite. Hence, nanotubes are one-dimensional objects with a well-defined direction along the nanotube axis that is analogous to the in-plane directions of graphite.

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Carbon nanotubes are large molecules of pure carbon that are long and thin and shaped like tubes, about 1-3 nanometers (1 nm = 1 billionth of a meter) in diameter, and hundreds to thousands of nanometers long. As individual molecules, nanotubes are 100 times stronger-than-steel and one-sixth its weight. Some carbon nanotubes can be extremely efficient conductors of electricity and heat; depending on their configuration, some act as semiconductors.