Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) 

are tubes made of carbon with diameters typically measured

in nanometers.
Carbon nanotubes often refer to single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) with diameters in the
range of a nanometer. Single-wall carbon nanotubes are one of the allotropes of carbon,
intermediate between fullerene cages and flat graphene.
Although not made this way, single-wall carbon nanotubes can be idealized as cutouts from a
two-dimensional hexagonal lattice of carbon atoms rolled up along one of the Bravais
lattice vectors of the hexagonal lattice to form a hollow cylinder. In this construction, periodic
boundary conditions are imposed over the length of this roll-up vector to yield a helical lattice of
seamlessly bonded carbon atoms on the cylinder surface.[1]
Carbon nanotubes also often refer to multi-wall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) consisting of
nested single-wall carbon nanotubes[1] weakly bound together by van der Waals interactions in a
tree ring-like structure. If not identical, these tubes are very similar to Oberlin, Endo, and
Koyama's long straight and parallel carbon layers cylindrically arranged around a hollow tube.
[2]
 Multi-wall carbon nanotubes are also sometimes used to refer to double- and triple-wall carbon
nanotubes.
Carbon nanotubes can also refer to tubes with an undetermined carbon-wall structure and
diameters less than 100 nanometers. Such tubes were discovered in 1952 by Radushkevich and
Lukyanovich.[3][4]
While nanotubes of other compositions exist, most research has been focused on the carbon
ones. Therefore, the "carbon" qualifier is often left implicit in the acronyms, and the names are
abbreviated NT, SWNT, and MWNT.
The length of a carbon nanotube produced by common production methods is often not reported,
but is typically much larger than its diameter. Thus, for many purposes, end effects are neglected
and the length of carbon nanotubes is assumed infinite.
Carbon nanotubes can exhibit remarkable electrical conductivity,[5][6] while others
are semiconductors.[7][8] They also have exceptional tensile strength[9] and thermal conductivity[10][11]
[12]
 because of their nanostructure and strength of the bonds between carbon atoms. In addition,
they can be chemically modified.[13] These properties are expected to be valuable in many areas
of technology, such as electronics, optics, composite materials (replacing or
complementing carbon fibers), nanotechnology, and other applications of materials science.
Rolling up a hexagonal lattice along different directions to form different infinitely long single-wall
carbon nanotubes shows that all of these tubes not only have helical but also translational
symmetry along the tube axis and many also have nontrivial rotational symmetry about this axis.
In addition, most are chiral, meaning the tube and its mirror image cannot be superimposed. This
construction also allows single-wall carbon nanotubes to be labeled by a pair of integers.[7]
A special group of achiral single-wall carbon nanotubes are metallic,[5] but all the rest are either
small or moderate band gap semiconductors.[7] These electrical properties, however, do not
depend on whether the hexagonal lattice is rolled from its back to front or from its front to back
and hence are the same for the tube and its mirror image.[7]
The structure of an ideal (infinitely long) single-walled carbon nanotube is that of a regular
hexagonal lattice drawn on an infinite cylindrical surface, whose vertices are the positions of the
carbon atoms. Since the length of the carbon-carbon bonds is fairly fixed, there are constraints on
the diameter of the cylinder and the arrangement of the atoms on it.[14]

The zigzag and armchair configurations[edit]

In the study of nanotubes, one defines a zigzag path on a graphene-like lattice as a path that
turns 60 degrees, alternating left and right, after stepping through each bond. It is also
conventional to define an armchair path as one that makes two left turns of 60 degrees followed
by two right turns every four steps.
On some carbon nanotubes, there is a closed zigzag path that goes around the tube. One says
that the tube is of the zigzag type or configuration, or simply is a zigzag nanotube. If the tube is
instead encircled by a closed armchair path, it is said to be of the armchair type, or an armchair
nanotube.

Zigzag nanotube, configuration (8, 0) Armchair nanotube, configuration (4, 4)