Berkeley Researchers Develop Technique For Imaging
Individual Carbon Nanotubes
Despite their almost incomprehensibly small size – a
diameter about one ten-thousandth the thickness of a human hair – single-walled
carbon nanotubes come in a plethora of different “species,” each with its own
structure and unique combination of electronic and optical properties.
Characterizing the structure and properties of an individual carbon nanotube
has involved a lot of guesswork – until now.
Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of
California (UC) Berkeley have developed a technique that can be used to
identify the structure of an individual carbon nanotube and characterize its
electronic and optical properties in a functional device.