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carbon nanotubes

Overview
Introduction to Carbon Nanotubes
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs; also known as buckytubes) are allotropes of carbon with a cylindrical nanostructure.
Nanotubes have been constructed with length-to-diameter ratio of up to 132,000,000:1, which is significantly larger than any other material. These cylindrical carbon molecules have novel properties that make them potentially useful in many applications in nanotechnology, electronics, optics and other fields of materials science, as well as potential uses in architectural fields. They exhibit extraordinary strength and unique electrical properties, and are efficient thermal Conductors. Nanotubes are members of the fullerene structural family, which
also includes the spherical buckyballs. The ends of a nanotube might be capped with a hemisphere of the buckyball structure.
Their name is derived from their size, since the diameter of a nanotube is on the order of a few nanometers (approximately 1/50,000th of the width of a human hair), while they can be up to
18 centimeters in length (as of 2010). Nanotubes are categorized as single-walled nanotubes (SWNTs) and multi-walled nanotubes (MWNTs)