'Few-Walled' Carbon Nanotubes Said Cheap and Efficient Option for Certain Applications
The scientists find these "few-walled" carbon nanotubes are structurally nearly as perfect as one carbon atom thick "single-walled" carbon nanotubes, while being cheaper to make than their single-walled cousins, said Duke assistant chemistry professor Jie Liu. Liu and his colleagues discovered how to create the tubes within heated streams of alcohol and hydrogen.
Moreover, tests by Liu's collaborators at Xintek found that few-walled nanotubes can be made to spew out electrons with better performance than current commercial carbon nanotubes, Liu added. Xintek is already commercializing varieties of carbon nanotubes as "field emitters" that generate electrons to empower portable and miniaturized X-ray sources. Other possible uses for electron field emitters would include-flat panel displays and new kinds of light sources.
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