The physical properties of carbon nanotubes

• Mechanical Properties

Because of its structural anisotropy (that is to say that the material does not exhibit the same properties in the directions of space), graphite presents a tensile modulus (modulus which measures the resistance to deformation) very important in terms of hexagons and much lower out of the plane. The nanotube has the mechanical strength of the grapheme and even amplify it. It combines the resistance to deformation at a very high flexibility. Various experiments have shown that the nanotube has an incredible ease to bend up to angles very important to warp and twist along its axis. The boron nitride nanotubes have mechanical properties similar to those of carbon nanotubes in particular a high strength and greater rigidity. These nanotubes are pledged to cover a wide scope in many areas complementary to those discussed for carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes used to make transistors a level of miniaturization reached until now. IBM researchers have already managed to create a nanotube transistor. Carbon nanotubes could also allow issuers to make fields (of electrons, in other words) at the nanoscale. Carbon nanotubes are superconducting at low temperature.
3.2 Properties of electrical conduction
Graphite is a poor conductor, however, cargo capacity is very sensitive to electrical disturbances such as chemical or geometric distortions, or doping (adding impurities to semiconductor increases the electrical conductivity of the body). With the nanotube disruption comes from the curvature effect. The consequence is that following its elicited a nanotube is a good or a bad driver. One third of the tubes the tubes 'chair' has a metallic character. This important property has been calculated theoretically and verified experimentally. In addition a number of phenomena related to the reduced dimensionality have been highlighted on the guide tubes. These phenomena of quantum origin are generally difficult to study because they could not have suitable physical systems. Simplicity Structural and chemical stability of the nanotube are metallic object model of molecular quantum wire.

• Chemical Properties

The nanotubes have chemical properties very attractive: as shown in the figure, it is possible to fill them by capillary action with fullerene molecules or crystalline compounds in order to obtain nano encapsulated son. These compounds may be metals, sulfides and metal chlorides.
  

Nanotube filled with fullerene