Large-scale production of single-walled carbon nanotubes by the electric-arc technique

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) offer the prospect of both new fundamental science and useful (nano)technological applications1. High yields (70–90%) of SWNTs close-packed in bundles can be produced by laser ablation of carbon targets2. The electric-arc technique used to generate fullerenes and multi-walled nanotubes is cheaper and easier to implement, but previously has led to only low yields of SWNTs3,4. Here we show that this technique can generate large quantities of SWNTs with similar characteristics to those obtained by laser ablation. This suggests that the (still unknown) growth mechanism for SWNTs must be independent of the details of the technique used to make them. The ready availability of large amounts of SWNTs, meanwhile, should make them much more accessible for further study.