What is the shape of a nano tube?

Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs) are cylindrical shells made, in concept, by rolling graphene sheets into a seamless cylinder.

What is the difference between nanowires and nanotubes?

Currently, scientists find two nano-size structures of particular interest: nanowires and carbon nanotubes. Nanowires are wires with a very small diameter, sometimes as small as 1 nanometer. A carbon nanotube is a nano-size cylinder of carbon atoms.

What are different types of structures of nanotubes?

In addition to the two different basic structures, there are three different possible types of carbon nanotubes. These three types of CNTs are armchair carbon nanotubes, zigzag carbon nanotubes, and chiral carbon nanotubes.

What’s the difference between nanowires and hollow tubes?

Nanowires — solid crystalline fibers, rather than hollow tubes — gained similar prominence a few years later. Due to their extreme slenderness, both nanotubes and nanowires are essentially one-dimensional.

What can nanowires and nanotubes be used for?

Tiny filaments and cylinders are studied for possible uses in energy, electronics, optics and other fields. Nanowires and nanotubes, slender structures that are only a few billionths of a meter in diameter but many thousands or millions of times longer, have become hot materials in recent years.

How are nanowires and nanotubes quasi one dimensional?

“They are quasi-one-dimensional materials,” says MIT associate professor of materials science and engineering Silvija Gradečak: “Two of their dimensions are on the nanometer scale.” This one-dimensionality confers distinctive electrical and optical properties.

What can be grown in a nanowire form?

In addition, materials that don’t ordinarily mix easily can be grown together in nanowire form. For example, layers of silicon and germanium, two widely used semiconductors, “are very difficult to grow together in thin films,” Gradečak says.