Researchers from a national laboratory in Japan have teamed up with a nearby company to mass-produce carbon nanotubes.

After discovering the 'supergrowth' method for producing single-walled carbon nanotubes last year, Kenji Hata of the AIST laboratory in Tsukuba, Japan, decided he wanted to “produce something that would last for decades”. He concluded that mass production was the answer and contacted eight companies working on carbon nanotubes. Although interested in supergrowth, they were reluctant to abandon their existing approaches and Hata eventually formed a partnership with Zeon Corporation, a Tokyo-based company that specialized in manufacturing rubber and plastic materials but not nanotubes.

The standard method for growing single-walled nanotubes involves expensive silicon substrates, but the supergrowth approach uses a cheaper nickel alloy to achieve comparable purity and properties (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 128, 13338; 2006). Hata and colleagues can now synthesize a 1-mm-thick layer of nanotubes on an A4-size foil in just ten minutes with the supergrowth technique. The next challenge is to get the production cost down to about $200–500 per kilogram. At present it costs around $100– 500 to buy just one gram of nanotubes.

“Because companies and national labs have different cultures, is it easy to have conflicts, but the most important thing is to have trust and a strong motivation”, says Hata. “It is also important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your material before attempting to mass produce. Our knowledge of nanotube synthesis, combined with our industrial partner's expertise in simulations, instrument design and chemistry, enabled us to develop large-area synthesis and economical catalyst systems.”

The work has received $20 million from the government under the Carbon Nanotube Capacitor Project, and the team includes Junko Nakanishi, of the Center for Chemical Risk Management at AIST who is responsible for evaluating waste management and safety at the facility.