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Nature Materials 3, 135 - 136 (2004)
doi:10.1038/nmat1078
Nanotubes: Strong bundles
Pulickel M. Ajayan1 & Florian Banhart2
- Pulickel M. Ajayan is at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, USA. e-mail: ajayan@rpi.edu
- Florian Banhart is at the Institut für Physikalische Chemie, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 55099 Mainz, Germany. e-mail: Banhart@uni-mainz.de
Abstract
The mechanical properties of nanotube bundles are limited by the sliding of individual nanotubes across each other. Introducing crosslinks between the nanotubes by electron irradiation prevents sliding, and leads to dramatic improvements in strength.
Ever since single-walled carbon nanotubes were discovered a decade ago1, 2, they have been touted as the strongest structures known. The Young's modulus of a single-walled nanotube is nearly a terapascal3 (1012 N m-2), unsurpassed by any other material synthesized to date.
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