A super-growth method for single-walled carbon nanotube synthesis — Development of a mass production technique for industrial application —

More than 20 years have passed since Dr Sumio Iijima discovered single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Development of this material is still an active area of research, world-wide, because the expected high electric and heat conductivity and mechanical strength properties are difficult to obtain with other existing materials. However, low growth efficiency of single-walled CNTs has made the cost of production high compared to that of multi-walled CNTs. Consequently, commercialization of single-walled CNTs has taken longer to develop than multi-walled CNTs. To address this problem, a super-growth process was developed at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) that uses an innovative chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method. The super-growth method opens the door to a range of industrial applications widely. This report describes the development of this process for industrial scale, mass production of high quality single-walled CNTs, with commercialization in mind, from the perspective of business-academia collaboration.