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Nanomaterials

Display of flexibility

Nature volume 441, pages 414–415 (2006)Cite this article

Treated the right way, carbon nanotubes can be moulded into large, flexible electron-emitting sheets. The material is one half of what's needed for an electronic display you could fold up and slip in your pocket.

As far as their electrical properties are concerned, the long, cylindrical carbon molecules known as carbon nanotubes are notoriously Janus-faced: picking out a nanotube from a newly fabricated batch, one cannot know whether it will be a conductor or an insulator. In principle, both types are useful, and the basic transport, mechanical and optical properties of each kind are more or less known. But not knowing how to tune the synthesis to yield just one type is a considerable handicap to the use of nanotubes as, for example, components in integrated circuits. Because of this, attention has concentrated on applications for which this uncertainty is irrelevant: nanoswitches1, motors2, actuators3 and yarns for composite materials4, to name but a few.

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Figure 1: Flexible friend.

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  1. the Institute of Physics of Complex Matter, FBS Station 3, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, CH-1015, Switzerland

    László Forró

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  1. László Forró
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Forró, L. Display of flexibility. Nature 441, 414–415 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/441414a

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