For the past few years materials scientists have been
eagerly exploring the properties of
fullerenes—geometric structures built of carbon atoms.
Recently a new fullerene has joined the buckyball, the
striking cage built of 60 atoms. Scientists have found that
the buckyball structure can be extended to form long,
slender tubes—carbon nanotubes—that are single
molecules comprised of rolled graphene sheets capped at each
end. Computer simulations and laboratory experiments show
that these tubes have extraordinary resilience and strength
and various unusual properties; for instance, they can
abruptly and reversibly snap from one shape to another under
load, and they can be formed into very strong ropes. They
also exhibit electrical conductivity in a quantized fashion
that has lead to experiments with tiny nanowires and
nanoscale transistors. A number of practical applications are
now being explored, although manufacture of such incredibly
small molecular wires poses enormous challenges.
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