Carbon Nanotubes:from Nanoscale Building Blocks to Macrostructures

1 Results Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have fascinating properties.In order to use these novel one-dimensional structures for applications such as in nano-electronic,nano-mechanical and electrochemical energy storage device and as structural elements in various composites,the structure of nanotubes needs to be tailored and various architectures and macroscale assembles have to be configured using nanotube building blocks.Nanotube macrostructures are macroscopically organized groups of CNTs,which are expected to have excellent properties implying promising applications.Recently,there has been growing interest in nanotube macrostructures because of their unique and usually enhanced properties and tremendous potential for applications.Realization of large-scale organized nanoscale structures of desired shape and form is important for obtaining scaled-up functional devices.If a synthetic method can produce high yield of nanotube macrostructures,these structures will have tremendous potential for fundamental research on these devices.This presentation will focus on the chemical vapor deposition of multiwalled carbon nanotubes to assembly directly on planar substrates into hierarchical macrostructures that include oriented and mutually orthogonal arrays,ordered bundles,and porous membranes.Super-long singlewalled nanotube strands and macro-films with controlled thickness and size through modification of a conventional method will also be discussed.In addition to assembling different nanotube arrays,some of our recent efforts will be summarized in this presentation,including exploiting electrical,optical and electrochemical properties of super-long nanotube strands and macrofilms and developing nanotube energy storage devices.