Preface

Carbon nanotubes are rolled up graphene sheets with a quasi-one-dimensional structure of nanometer-scale diameters. More than twenty years have passed since the pioneering work on carbon nanotubes by Prof. Iijima in 1991. During that time, carbon nanotubes have at‐ tracted much attention from physicists, chemists, material scientists, and electronic device engineers, because of their excellent structural, electronic, optical, chemical, and mechanical properties. Most of these unique properties mainly originate in the parent material, gra‐ phene, which has also been very intensively studied as a Dirac Fermion system. More re‐ cently, demand for innovative industrial applications of carbon nanotubes is increasing.

This book contains recent research topics covering syntheses techniques of carbon nano‐ tubes and nanotube-based composites, and their applications. All of the chapters were writ‐ ten by researchers who are active on the front lines. This book consists of three parts. Part 1 mainly focuses on novel syntheses techniques for single- and multi-wall carbon nanotubes, nanocoils, and their composites. Some chapters in Part 1 describe theoretical aspects of nanotube composite formation. In Part 2, electrical and medical applications of carbon nano‐ tubes are described. This part covers applications for gas sensors, transparent electrodes, and interconnects. Nanotube-based therapeutics and biological detection techniques are also reviewed. Part 3 mainly focuses on applications for green technologies, with much attention paid to energy storage and decontamination technologies. However, note that the above cat‐ egorization is not rigorous: Some chapters are quite broad in scope and cover topics in more than one category.

I believe that this book will be of interest to physicists, chemists, material scientists, engi‐ neers, and students who are working on carbon nanotubes both in the academic and indus‐ trial domains

> **Satoru Suzuki** Senior Research Scientist Low-Dimensional Nanomaterials Research Group Materials Science Laboratory NTT Basic Research Laboratories, Japan

*I express my deepest appreciation to all of the authors for their excellent contributions and endeavors in the publication of this book.*

**Section 1**

**Syntheses of Carbon Nanotubes and Their**

**Composites**

**Syntheses of Carbon Nanotubes and Their Composites**

**Chapter 1**

**Production of Carbon Nanotubes**

**and Carbon Nanoclusters by the**

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

ance routes to producing desired SWNTs are expected to be found.

and other carbon clusters can be carried out.

Since the discovery of methods for the mass production of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) [1, 2], applications of SWNTs such as transistor devices, biosensing devices, dou‐ ble-layer-type capacitors, transparent electrode films, radio wave absorbents and material hardeners have been studied [3-5]. Large-scale production and improvement of purity of SWNTs by the electric-arc techniques have been developed [6, 7]. However, the efficient production of high-quality and defect-free SWNTs, and metal/semiconductor selected or di‐ ameter-controlled production of SWNTs have not yet been achieved. Therefore, basic study of the various methods of producing SWNTs is still important, by which new high-perform‐

Here, the production of SWNTs and carbon nanoclusters by the arc discharge method utiliz‐ ing a magnetic field, known as the *J*x*B* arc-jet discharge method, has been studied [8-10]. Al‐ though the application of a steady-state magnetic field to arc discharge is not such a popular method, electromagnetic force can change the flow of hot gas in the arc region and thus con‐ trol the production process of carbon clusters. To realize the large-scale production of car‐ bon clusters by the arc discharge method, a revolver-injection-type *J*x*B* arc-jet producer was successfully developed by our group, by which the continuous mass production of SWNTs

As a result, the more efficient production of SWNTs and other carbon clusters compared with conventional arc discharge methods has been achieved. Here, the development of the

> © 2013 Mieno and Matsumoto; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2013 Mieno and Matsumoto; licensee InTech. This is a paper distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

*J*x*B* arc-jet discharge method and results obtained using the method are described.

**JxB Arc-Jet Discharge Method**

Tetsu Mieno and Naoki Matsumoto

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/51964

**1. Introduction**

**Chapter 1**
