SYNOPSIS OF CHEMISTRY

TOPIC: CARBON NANOTUBES

SUBMITTED BY:
DIGVIJAY SINGH
ROLL NO: 02
REG. NO: 10804174
SEC: E2801

SUBMITTED TO:
Lect. JYOTI
INTRODUCTION
Carbon nanotube
Carbon nanotubes are molecular-scale tubes of graphitic carbon with
outstanding properties. They are among the stiffest and strongest fibres known,
and have remarkable electronic properties and many other unique
characteristics. For these reasons they have attracted huge academic and
industrial interest, with thousands of papers on nanotubes being published every
year. Commercial applications have been rather slow to develop, however,
primarily because of the high production costs of the best quality nanotubes.

Structure

The bonding in carbon nanotubes is sp², with each atom joined to three
neighbours, as in graphite. The tubes can therefore be considered as rolled-up
graphene sheets (graphene is an individual graphite layer). There are three
distinct ways in which a graphene sheet can be rolled into a tube, as shown in
the diagram below.

The first two of these, known as “armchair” (top left) and “zigzag” (middle left)
have a high degree of symmetry. The terms "armchair" and "zigzags" refer to
the arrangement of hexagons around the circumference. The third class of tube,
which in practice is the most common, is known as chiral, meaning that it can
exist in two mirror-related forms. An example of a chiral nanotube is shown at
the bottom left.

The structure of a nanotube can be specified by a vector, (n,m), which defines

how the graphene sheet is rolled up. This can be understood with reference to
figure on the right. To produce a nanotube with the indices (6,3), say, the sheet
is rolled up so that the atom labelled (0,0) is superimposed on the one labelled
(6,3). It can be seen from the figure that m = 0 for all zigzag tubes, while n = m
for all armchair tubes.

Synthesis

The arc-evaporation method, which produces the best quality nanotubes,

involves passing a current of about 50 amps between two graphite electrodes in
an atmosphere of helium. This causes the graphite to vaporise, some of it
condensing on the walls of the reaction vessel and some of it on the cathode. It
is the deposit on the cathode which contains the carbon nanotubes. Single-
walled nanotubes are produced when Co and Ni or some other metal is added to
the anode. It has been known since the 1950s, if not earlier, that carbon
nanotubes can also be made by passing a carbon-containing gas, such as a
hydrocarbon, over a catalyst. The catalyst consists of nano-sized particles of
metal, usually Fe, Co or Ni. These particles catalyse the breakdown of the
gaseous molecules into carbon, and a tube then begins to grow with a metal
particle at the tip. It was shown in 1996 that single-walled nanotubes can also be
produced catalytically. The perfection of carbon nanotubes produced in this way
has generally been poorer than those made by arc-evaporation, but great
improvements in the technique have been made in recent years. The big
advantage of catalytic synthesis over arc-evaporation is that it can be scaled up
for volume production. The third important method for making carbon
nanotubes involves using a powerful laser to vaporise a metal-graphite target.
This can be used to produce single-walled tubes with high yield.

History
In 1980 we knew of only three forms of carbon, namely diamond, graphite, and
amorphous carbon. Today we know there is a whole family of other forms of
carbon. The first to be discovered was the hollow, cage-like
buckminsterfullerene molecule - also known as the buckyball, or the C60
fullerene. There are now thirty or more forms of fullerenes, and also an
extended family of linear molecules, carbon nanotubes. C60 is the first spherical
carbon molecule, with carbon atoms arranged in a soccer ball shape. In the
structure there are 60 carbon atoms and a number of five-membered rings
isolated by six-membered rings. The second, slightly elongated, spherical
carbon molecule in the same group resembles a rugby ball, has seventy carbon
atoms and is known as C70. C70’s structure has extra six-membered carbon
rings, but there are also a large number of other potential structures containing
the same number of carbon atoms. Their particular shapes depend on whether
five-membered rings are isolated or not, or whether seven-membered rings are
present. Many other forms of fullerenes up to and beyond C120 have been
characterized, and it is possible to make other fullerene structures with five-
membered rings in different positions and sometimes adjoining one another.

SOURCE
1) Text book ABC ( S.P JOHAR )

2) Wikipedia