My life with the nanotube

My personal involvement with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) started while visiting the lab of late Rick Smalley at Rice during my 1994 sabbatical year. I was impressed by the rapid succession of fundamental discoveries in the field. There was progress in large-scale synthesis, characterization techniques including atomic-level imaging, mechanical toughness and chemical stability, peapods, chirality-dependent ballistic conductance in 1D, record thermal conductivity, and many more.

Eventually, I fell in love with the nanotube. To prevent the unique, beautiful material from being forgotten and lose funding like the buckyballs (fulerenes) a few years later, I decided to dedicate my life to forming and continually supporting the community of researchers interested in nanotubes. The goal was to get beyond the curiosity stage to mainstream research and eventually to innovative applications in the consumer market. To promote progress, around 1995 I founded The Nanotube Site, which initially played an important in defining the community, and organized an International Workshop on the Science and Application of Nanotubes (NT99) in 1999 with the assistance of Richard Enbody, my faculty colleague from the Department of Computer Engineering. My love affair with the nanotube continued with the success of The Nanotube Site and in particular the NT99 workshop. Reaching the "hottest topic status" in early 90's and maintaining it for over a decade indicated that the second goal was reached. With an annual industrial production of hundreds of tons of nanotubes world-wide and their use ranging from performance-enhanced Lithium-Ion Batteries to a mass distribution of CNT touch-screen displays replacing brittle indium-tin-oxide (ITO) during the last decade indicate application potential, the last goal.

I continued my involvement with nanotubes until present. To some degrees, I treated the Nanotube conferences like my babies. During the initial years, the number of registered participants exceeded the planned capacity by a factor of two. This was manageable at NT99 in East Lansing, with 120 instead of the planned 60 participants. The following conference, NT01, was planned to accommodate 140 participants at a beautiful location in Potsdam. The large number of applications, close to 300, turned from a blessing to a headache for the organizers. Only half of the applicants could be admitted due to the hard limit, imposed by the hotel capacity at the somewhat remote location. The strong interest in the topic and the conference format held on at NT02 at Boston College. Since then, the number of participants has increased gradually, reaching approximately 900 at NT09 in Beijing.

To reflect the international nature of the research field, the NT03 conference was held at Seoul National University in Korea. By that time, the Asia-Europe-Americas "continent swapping mode" emerged as a pattern. The NT04 conference was held in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. The NT05 conference has been brought back to Europe. NT06 took place in Japan, NT07 in Brazil, NT08 in France, NT09 in China, NT10 in Canada, NT11 in the U.K., NT12 in Australia, NT13 in Finland, NT14 in the USA, NT15 in Japan, NT16 in Austria and NT17 in Brazil

1. David Tománek, Guide Through the Nanocarbon Jungle: Buckyballs, nanotubes, graphene and beyond (IOP Publishing, Bristol, UK, 2014).
   [General information] [Supplementary information]
2. "The Nanotube Conference Series"
3. "Charter of the Nanotube Conference Series"
4. "The Nanotube Site"