Carbon nanotubes hold great promise for applications ranging from miniaturized drug delivery systems to lightweight structural material for aircraft, spacecraft and suspension bridges. The hollow, spaghetti-like tubes promise to replace steel with structural materials that are 100 times stronger and weigh six times less. Carbon nanotubes conduct electricity like perfect metals or can act as tiny semiconductor devices. They already have found their way into today's new field-emission flat-panel displays and promise to replace silicon chips in tomorrow's computers. Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Dave Geohegan, Alex Puretzky and Ilia Ivanov are using laser ablation and vapor deposition techniques to grow nanotubes up to millimeters long. They also are developing ways to align them in polymers for new generations of materials. The challenge now is to gain a better understanding of the tubes' chemistry and how they grow so scientists can optimize the process.
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