For a decade, materials scientists have dreamed of using cylinders of carbon with walls just one atom thick as the building blocks for a new generation of sensors, transistors, and other tiny devices. Before that happens, however, researchers must find better ways to grow and align these carbon nanotubes.
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Jie Liu and his colleagues at Duke University in Durham, N.C., now report growing the longest individual carbon nanotubes ever and aligning them in a two-dimensional grid.