Access

News and Views

Nature Materials 3, 135–136 (1 March 2004) | doi:10.1038/nmat1078

Nanotubes: Strong bundles

Pulickel M. Ajayan & Florian Banhart

Ever since single-walled carbon nanotubes were discovered a decade ago, they have been touted as the strongest structures known. The Young's modulus of a single-walled nanotube is nearly a terapascal (1012 N m|[minus]|2), unsurpassed by any other material synthesized to date.