The nano future is emerging through the haze of hype: the road to terabit memory and cheap flat-screen displays will be paved with carbon nanotubes.

Carbon nanotubes are, in theory at least, the ideal material for building tomorrow’s nanoelectronics. And now, a little more than 10 years after their discovery, nanotubes seem ready to make the transition from exotic laboratory wonders to materials useful in actual technologies. Prototypes of nanotube devices are being tested in everything from full-color flat-panel TV screens to ultrabright outdoor lighting to a simpler, smaller x-ray machine; consumers could be shopping for a flat-screen TV that uses nanotubes as early as Christmas 2003.

But it is in computer memory and logic that nanotubes could have their greatest impact