Great Expectations for Tiny Tubes

It looks just like soot. But unlike the mess caked on your barbecue grill, this substance consists of billions of tiny tubes of pure carbon resembling rolled-up chicken wire. And these striking structures, called nanotubes, are poised to have an impact on fields as diverse as computing, materials engineering, and medical devices. Discovered in 1991 when Sumio Iijima, a physicist at Japan's NEC Corp., zapped carbon with laser beams, nanotubes set off an international race among researchers. So far, laboratories have revealed a steadily lengthening list of their remarkable properties. Nanotubes are a descendant of buckyballs, which became a scientific sensation in 1985. Until then, the only known forms of pure carbon were the rigid crystal structure of diamond and slippery sheets of graphite. The arrangement of 60 carbon atoms into round balls -- dubbed buckyballs, or fullerenes, because they resembled the dome structures designed by architect R. Buckminster Fuller -- seemed to presage a new carbon chemistry. Nanotubes haven't transformed any industries yet, either. But while practical applications still are years away, a steady stream of recent discoveries point to real commercial potential. The most promise lies in computing and electronics.