Cutting Methods and Perspectives of Carbon Nanotubes

Short carbon nanotubes have a large potential application value in medicine, electronic devices, and composites. Nevertheless, the length of carbon nanotubes prepared is inconsistent and long, which limits the application range of carbon nanotubes. To cope with this problem, different cutting methods are used to fabricate short carbon nanotubes, which greatly improves the application of carbon nanotubes. Recently, much literature had described the cutting methods of these short carbon nanotubes. Here we attempt to sort out and summarize the relevant literature and highlight the most important advances in cutting methods and machining quality of carbon nanotubes. Special attention is paid to the most common and important physical cutting, chemical cutting, and physical/chemical cutting methods. Significantly, the physical chemistry processes of cutting single-walled carbon nanotubes and multiwalled carbon nanotubes are reviewed and discussed. Additionally, a summary chart is given for readers to understand the cutting methods, application fields, and cutting quality assessments of carbon nanotubes. These can enable researchers in this field to have a deeper understanding of the physical-chemical knowledge and application fields involved in the cutting process of carbon nanotubes. Finally, the conclusions of this paper are summarized, and the current technical challenges and future research opportunities of cutting methods based on carbon nanotubes have been prospected.