Carbon Nanotubes - A Material rising like a Phoenix

Carbon Nanotubes (CM) are considered the material of the 21st century. Despite of SEM pictures having been published in a Russian paper in 1952, the discovery of nanotubes is usually dated to 1991 when S. Iijima found tubular structures in the ashes of his arc-discharge experiment used to produce fullerenes. Due to their extraordinary properties, applications and products in almost every industrial sector have been postulated shortly after their discovery and improvements in their production techniques. Meanwhile some products are actually available. However, various open questions are still to be answered before a broad application on all sectors can take place. While the production, especially of multi walled carbon nanotubes (MWNT), is nowadays being performed in industrial dimensions, processing of the CNTs is still a challenge due to their inert and hydrophobic nature. On this account, chemical functionalization, e.g. by means of technical low pressure plasmas, is essential to improve solubility and dispersibility. Besides that, a lot of time and money is being 1 invested in an early risk assessment and toxicological evaluation along with the ongoing product development.