As researchers move back and forth between universities and companies, they can encourage collaborations that bring together the academic and industrial worlds.

Although Yoshikazu Homma no longer works for NTT, the Japanese telephone company, he still maintains close ties with former colleagues at his old employer's basic research labs in Atsugi, near Tokyo. Now a physics professor at Tokyo University of Science, Homma has been working with Yoshihiro Kobayashi, a surface physicist at NTT, to understand the role of catalyst particles in the growth of carbon nanotubes.

Gold, silver and copper nanoparticles have all been used to grow nanotubes in recent years, so Homma and Kobayashi hypothesized that curvature on the nanoscale might be enough to act as a template for the growth of nanotubes, even in the absence of catalytic properties. Indeed, using semiconductor nanocrystals made in Kobayashi's lab at NTT, Homma and colleagues found that they could grow single- and double-walled nanotubes with diameters of 5 nm or less from silicon carbide, germanium and silicon nanoparticles. Although the yields in their experiments were relatively low, their results suggest that the essential role of the catalysts is to provide a template for the formation of the nanotube 'caps' (Nano Lett. 7, 2272–2275; 2007).

“Performing experiments together is a simple and effective way for a successful collaboration to occur,” says Homma, whose work on nanotubes is funded by the Japan Science and Technology Corporation as a CREST project. “I send my students to NTT to work with the physicists. They prepare the samples there and grow the nanotubes back at the university.”

Homma believes that if a researcher has done good work in a specific field, there should be plenty of room to apply or extend this work into other areas. “The question is,” he asks, “how do you find new fields and partners?”. One answer he offers is to attend a conference in a different field.