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For the first time, researchers at Empa and the Max Planck
Institute for Solid State Research have succeeded in "growing"
single-wall carbon nanotubes (CNT) with a single predefined structure - and
hence with identical electronic properties. And here is how they pulled it off:
the CNTs "assembled themselves", as it were, out of tailor-made
organic precursor molecules on a platinum surface, as reported by the
researchers in the latest issue of the journal "Nature". In future,
CNTs of this kind may be used in ultra-sensitive light detectors and
ultra-small transistors.