Electron beams shrink carbon nanotubes to order

November 14, 2006 | Source: NewScientist.com news service

A way to controllably shrink carbon nanotubes to a particular diameter could someday help electronics engineers build faster computers and other novel electronic devices.

An electron beam is fired at the tube to knock carbon atoms out of their honeycomb structure while a current is run through the tube to reshuffle the remaining carbon atoms back into a regular, albeit narrower, nanotube structure.