5. Future of Carbon
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Fullerene and carbon nanotube have come to attention recently as advanced carbon materials.
The atom constituting them is "C = carbon". It is same as graphite or diamond, but they have closed atomic structures of spherical or tubular shape. In particular, "carbon nanotube" is expected to be applied to materials for semi-conductors or batteries. It was discovered from soot by Dr. Sumio Iijima in 1991 and has nano-sized (1 nano = 1 billionth) tubular shape structure.Typical structure of fullerene is a soccer-ball-shape structure with 60 atoms bonded together. This is called "C60", which is expected to be applied to superconductive materials and ultra-hard materials.
Making use of optical, electrical and physicochemical properties of fullerene and carbon nanotube, the demand from following applications or markets is expected.The application fields expected for fullerene and carbon nanotube
- Semi-conductor device material
- Anode material for secondary batteries
- Electrically-conductive material
- Hydrogen storage material
- Capacitor material
- Ultra-hard material
- Pharmaceutical products
- Photoresist material
