A Primer: Carbon Nanotubes
CNT Dispatch: A classic story of amazing tech breakthrough with slow market adoption
Hello and welcome one and all, today I’ve got a good one for you.
You may have heard of carbon nanotubes, or maybe graphene, the so-called “wonder materials” that promised to revolutionize everything from electronics to material science. For a while, they seemed like classic overhype: cool science demos, TED talks, and then… nothing.
While researching datacentre cooling opportunities, I stumbled on carbon nanotubes. And I says to myself, I says, hmm, weren’t they supposed to solve it all a while ago? So I dig in. And turns out, CNTs are a real boy now. After decades of promises and false starts, they are finally showing up in real-world products.
Once a novelty confined to labs and research papers, these one-dimensional carbon cylinders are now being manufactured by the ton and used in EV batteries, aerospace composites, thermal materials, and polymers. Costs are down. Consistency is up. And customers are using them for an ever expanding range of products across energy, electronics, infrastructure, and defense.
So I spoke to Dr. Alvin Orbaek White, Founder of TrimTabs, a few times over the past few months to figure out the what’s what and who’s who.
So, this is one of my now *famous* primers. The why, what, how, and who of CNTs in 2025, and why you might want to start paying attention.
There will be new materials discovered and synthesised by AI. But we have a wonder material already, at a higher technical and market readiness level, and everyone is sleeping on it. Well not me.
Thanks, Lawrence x
1. Why CNTs Matter Now
“I just want to say two words to you. Just two words... carbon nanotubes”
A carbon nanotube (CNT) is a tiny, hollow cylinder made of carbon atoms (like graphene rolled into a tube) offering outrageous strength, conductivity, and lightness.
The defining constraints of this decade: electrification, energy density, and sustainability, are all pushing industries toward high performance, thinner, and lighter components. So CNTs are making their way out into the real world.
We need better EV batteries. CNTs replace carbon black additives in cathodes and anodes. They reduce internal resistance, enable silicon anodes to survive 300% volume swings, and allow faster charging, greater mechanical stability and better energy density. And they do it at 0.1–1% loadings, freeing up room for active materials.
Computers are running very hot. We should know about this one from Scale, Deploy and Secure. CPUs, GPUs, EV power electronics, and data centers face brutal thermal loads. CNTs carry heat better than copper, especially along the length of the tube. When lots of them are lined up in the same direction, they can be used in thin layers or flexible films to replace messy thermal greases or bulky fillers.
Circular economy. CNTs are being used for recyclable, low-carbon cement, green coatings, and as additives in bio-based polymers. Some producers are working on capturing methane and converting it to CNTs + hydrogen.
CNTs are no longer a lab curiosity. They’re now a specifiable and scalable component across a range of applications. But before we get to that.
2. From Discovery to Deployment
Yup, that's me. I bet you're wondering how I got here…
We begin in 1952, when Soviet scientists first captured electron microscope images of carbon-based tubes. Nearly four decades later, in 1991, Japanese physicist Sumio Iijima published the first clear images and structural analysis of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), sparking global interest. In 1993, both Iijima and Donald Bethune at IBM independently reported single-walled CNTs (SWCNTs), which offered even more exotic electronic properties.
By the 2000s, CNTs were the darlings of advanced materials research. SWCNTs were hyped as the future of transistors. Bayer, Arkema, and Showa Denko built pilot plants in anticipation of a nanotech wave. But reality hit: CNTs *clumped* (technical term), yields were low, and prices stayed high. Most early ventures folded or scaled back. Bayer exited in 2013.
Now it’s the 2020s. Demand for better batteries, composites, and thermal systems gave CNTs real traction. Costs fell. Manufacturing improved. SWCNTs, once a lab novelty, began scaling. Textbook stuff, nearly 30 years from discovery to real product-market fit. Hype fades, but progress compounds.
Just look at 3D printing. Hyped in the ’90s, declared dead in the 2010s, now a $20B+ industry. Not because it changed everything, but because it found the few places it mattered most. CNTs may be on that same path.
3. CNT Fundamentals
Carbon nanotubes are cylindrical molecules made of sp²-bonded carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice, basically, graphene rolled into a tube. Or basically tiny tubes made entirely of carbon atoms, arranged like chicken wire.
There are two main types:
SWCNTs (Single-Walled): One atom thick. Electronically tunable: some are metallic, others semiconducting. The specific combination of twist angle and wrapping direction (chirality) determines whether a particular nanotube will conduct electricity like a metal or act as a semiconductor.
MWCNTs (Multi-Walled): Concentric layers of graphene cylinders. Easier to make, cheaper, and dominant in the market (90%+).
Source: Tuball, https://tuball.com/articles/single-walled-carbon-nanotubes
What do they do?
The physical properties of CNTs are mad when compared to altermative industrial materials.
Strength: CNTs are up to 300x stronger than steel by weight.
Stiffness: They don’t deform under load, making them ideal for reinforcing other materials.
Heat conduction: They carry heat better than copper or even diamond, especially along the length of the tube. (Geothermal drilling?)
Electrical conductivity: Similar to metals, but much lighter and more flexible.
Weight: They’re lighter than aluminum, despite delivering far better performance.
This unique mix: extreme strength, stiffness, conductivity, and low weight, is what makes CNTs so attractive across sectors. No other material has this combination.
The challenge has never been performance, it’s always been about cost, consistency, and scalability. And while those problems are finally being solved, a few technical barriers remain.
Uniformity: They like to clump. CNTs naturally stick together into tangled bundles, making them hard to mix evenly into liquids, polymers, or slurries. That uneven dispersion can kill performance and reliability in real-world products.
Chirality: Most single-walled CNTs are produced as a random mix of metallic and semiconducting tubes. If you want to build a precise electronic device, that unpredictability is a nightmare. Controlling or sorting for chirality, the “twist” that defines their electrical behavior, is an open frontier.
Quality control: Purity and reproducibility remain tricky. Tiny amounts of leftover metal catalyst, variation in tube length, and inconsistent surface treatments can all create headaches, especially in applications that demand strict reliability, like medical devices or semiconductors.
That said, even imperfect CNTs often outperform alternatives. Their performance-to-weight ratio, multifunctionality, and flexibility mean that for many industrial uses, “good enough” CNTs will do. The key has been learning how to work with them, not chasing perfection. (Great parallel with Mortal Computation, where we create computing devices that accept high variability and embrace imperfection rather than fighting it.)
4. How CNTs Are Made
Okay, so these are wonder materials. Stronger than steel, and better conductors than copper. As I've said, performance has never been in question. The risk is in making these things at scale.
So how do you actually make a nanotube? The story is about evolution from crude early methods that proved CNTs were possible, to today's industrial processes that make them by the ton.
The Early Days: Proof of Concept
The first methods were brute force approaches that worked, but barely:
Arc discharge: Two graphite rods form an arc, vaporizing carbon into nanotubes. High-purity, low-yield. Think of it as controlled lightning in a lab.
Laser ablation: A laser blasts carbon from a graphite target. Precise and clean, but expensive and glacially slow.
These techniques proved CNTs could be made and helped researchers understand their properties, but they were never going to supply an industry. You'd get grams per day, not kilograms.
The Breakthrough: Chemical Vapor Deposition
The real game-changer was Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD). The concept is elegant: flow a carbon-rich gas like methane or ethylene over tiny metal catalyst particles (typically iron, cobalt, or nickel) at high heat (700–1200°C). Carbon atoms from the gas settle on the catalyst and start forming tubes, atom by atom.
This kind of bottom-up growth is common in the semiconductor world (think epitaxial wafers), but still feels surprising. You'd assume that building something so precise would require top-down etching, not a kind of molecular self-assembly. But assumptions are dangerous, as the old saying goes.
CVD was the key to unlocking mass production, but it took years to perfect. Early CVD processes were batch-based, dirty, and wildly inconsistent which was fine for research, but terrible for industry.
CVD Evolution
Today's industrial CNT production relies on refined versions of CVD, each optimized for different applications:
Floating catalyst CVD: This is the workhorse for industrial-scale multi-walled CNTs. Catalyst particles and carbon gas are injected together into a furnace, where CNTs form mid-air before being collected. It's simple, scalable, and produces material by the ton.
Fixed-bed CVD: Here, the catalyst is immobilized on a surface. The result is vertically aligned "forests" of CNTs, which can be spun into threads or processed into films. It's slower than floating catalyst, but essential for applications needing structure like antennas or stretchable electronics.
Plasma-enhanced CVD: Introduces plasma to lower temperatures and improve alignment. This is crucial for making clean, electronics-grade CNTs where precision matters more than volume.
Specialized Techniques: Still Alive
The original arc discharge and laser methods haven’t disappeared entirely. They're still used when you need the highest purity material for research applications. And newer chemical routes like HiPco (High Pressure Carbon Monoxide) and CoMoCat (Cobalt-Molybdenum Catalyst) have emerged for growing very uniform single-walled CNTs with precise chirality control, essential for electronics research, though not *yet* economical for bulk applications.
What's New and Why It Matters
The last 5–10 years brought major process innovation, and with it, scale and cost breakthroughs:
Iron-free catalysts: Historically, iron was the go-to catalyst. But for battery applications, even trace metals can trigger side reactions or degrade lifespan. Iron-free catalyst systems produce cleaner CNTs that require less purification which saves both time and money.
Fluidized bed and rotary kiln reactors: These look more like the reactors used in the chemical industry: large, continuous, 24/7 systems that can produce tons of material with tight quality control. Batch-to-batch variation is out. Inline monitoring, real-time tuning, and reactor automation are in.
Chirality control research: One of the holy grails in SWCNT production. Most synthesis today yields a random mix of semiconducting and metallic tubes. But researchers using tuned catalysts and templated growth are now able to selectively grow CNTs with specific electronic behaviors. That's critical for future CNT-based electronics and sensors.
So after all this, where did we land? CNTs with:
99% carbon purity (clean enough for demanding battery applications)
<10 ppm metal contaminants (critical for avoiding side reactions in electrochemistry)
Tunable tube length, diameter, and surface chemistry (customized for specific applications)
Costs down to $30–50/kg for MWCNTs (with <$20/kg on the near horizon, approaching commodity pricing)
As always there is more R&D to do and manufacturing techniques will continue to improve, but we can say manufacturability is no longer a problem for CNTs.
5. CNTs vs. Other Materials
Those of you that have stuck with me since the beginning will know I did a whole horizon scanning project and compared 150+ technologies. Lost in the mist of time now of course. I had a category called novelty: how does this new thing: VTOLs, FHE, DAOs, DeFi, etc compare to alternatives ways to solve the same problem.
Carbon nanotubes are an interesting case. They aren’t just strong or conductive, they sort of do it all. They can improve strength, heat flow, and electrical performance all in one material, often with less than 1% added to a product. Now, I hesitate to use the word “wonder material” but:
The main message is "Loadings Needed" - CNTs work at <1% while carbon black needs 5-15% and carbon fiber needs 30-60%. This is huge. You get dramatic property improvements while barely changing your base material. Your plastic still feels like plastic, your rubber still bends like rubber.
CNTs form a "percolating network" at incredibly low concentrations. Think of it like adding a tiny amount of electrical wire mesh to plastic - once you hit the threshold, conductivity jumps dramatically. Graphene should do this too (it's a 2D sheet), but in practice it tends to clump and restack, losing its magic.
CNTs at $30-50/kg might seem expensive compared to carbon black at $1-3/kg, but remember you need 10-15× less material. So your actual material cost per part could be similar or even lower.
This explains why CNTs are gaining traction in batteries, conductive plastics, and lightweight composites. They deliver exceptional performance at practical loadings, with costs that are now reasonable. It's not that they're better at everything, it's that they hit a reasonable balance of performance, processability, and economics for many applications.
6. Where CNTs Are Used
Now CNTs are made at scale and sold for reasonable prices, they’re moving out of the lab and into the supply chain. What are they used for?
Basically, batteries, construction and aerospace composites.
1. Batteries
This is the commercial beachhead. Battery OEMs care about lower resistance, better charge rates, and longer cycle life. CNTs, especially multi-walled, are now a standard additive in lithium-ion formulations.
Conductive additives: Replacing some portion of carbon black with CNTs dramatically improves electrical connectivity in the cathode or anode. At loadings as low as 0.1–1 wt%, CNTs massively reduce internal resistance, enabling faster charging and improved power density.
Silicon anodes: Silicon can store ~10× more lithium than graphite but expands 300% during charging. CNTs act as a flexible scaffold, holding particles together and maintaining contact with the current collector. Without CNTs (or nanofibers), silicon anodes degrade rapidly.
Solid-state batteries: Can help conduct electrons through dry cathode layers and improve mechanical integrity at the solid–solid interface. They’re one of the only conductive materials that are flexible, chemically stable, and structurally reinforcing.
Supercapacitors: CNTs improve both energy and power density by reinforcing the electrode structure while maintaining low resistance, even under high current flow.
Forecasts suggest that battery applications will consume 50,000+ metric tons of CNTs annually by 2032: more than all other current use cases combined.
2. Construction & Cement
Loadings again. At very low loadings (just 0.05–0.1% by weight), CNTs enhance durability, especially in high-performance concrete mixes.
Higher strength: Compressive and flexural strength improvements of 15–35% are common, which means longer-lasting foundations and less rebar in some applications.
Crack resistance: CNTs help bridge microcracks during curing and loading, increasing service life and reducing maintenance cycles.
Water resistance: CNT-enhanced mixes show lower porosity and water permeability, which matters for infrastructure exposed to freeze–thaw cycles or marine environments.
Smart concrete: Very interesting future capability, because CNTs are conductive, they can also turn concrete into a sensor, detecting strain, vibration, or cracking in real-time.
The market is still dominated by pilot projects and high-performance builds, but the scale of opportunity is vast. If CNTs become a standard additive in even a fraction of the global cement supply chain, the volume impact could rival that of batteries.
3. Aerospace & Composites
CNTs are a natural fit in advanced composites, where strength-to-weight, electrical properties, and environmental resilience all matter. In aerospace, CNTs are being used in:
Prepregs and resin systems: CNTs increase interlaminar strength, reduce delamination risk, and improve impact resistance.
EMI shielding: CNTs provide built-in electromagnetic interference shielding, useful for everything from avionics housings to satellite structures.
Lightning strike protection: When blended into the outer layers of aircraft skins, CNTs can dissipate high voltages without heavy copper meshes.
These gains are valuable in defense and space systems, where reliability, weight, and multifunctionality justify premium costs. NASA, Airbus, Boeing, Lockheed, and others are already trialing CNT-reinforced materials across platforms, from fuselages to solar array arms.
Beyond the major markets of batteries, construction, and aerospace composites, carbon nanotubes are also beginning to see experimentation in a set of smaller, fast-growing applications.
Emerging Use Cases
These markets are smaller today, but they’re growing fast and could become strategically important within 5–10 years.
Wearables, sensors, and soft electronics. CNTs are flexible, conductive, and can be embedded in fabrics and thin films. This is the real “smart materials”. They’re used in transparent antennas, smart clothing, and biomedical patches that track stress, hydration, or vitals. So materials turn into sensors. This is where I imagine t-shirts that measure heart rate; bridges that measure tension; and invisible antennas in windows and solar panels.
Thermal interface materials (TIMs). TIMs sit between hot chips and their cooling systems, helping transfer heat. Traditional greases and silicone pads dry out, degrade, and can be messy. CNT-based TIMs can be dry-installed, don’t degrade over time, and offer far better thermal performance: up to 5–10 W/mK in practice, which is basically how efficiently heat flows through a material. Standard thermal paste is typically 1-4 W/mK, so CNTs offer roughly 2-3× better heat transfer.
Plastics. In cars, appliances, electronics, and packaging. Often pre-mixed into pellets or masterbatches, CNTs strengthen these materials, boost conductivity, and add flame resistance. In automotive interiors and battery housings, they enable electrostatic protection without metal fillers. In tires, they improve grip and reduce wear alongside carbon black.
Now without adding hype, what’s exciting is the “smart material” pitch. We aren’t there, but CNTs have the potential to be the first real “intelligent material”. Years ago, I wrote that we wouldn’t have a “real” IoT without integrated sensors and compute. Maybe CNTs are actually the material that turns all materials “smart” into a real IoT ambient computing world.
7. Who’s Selling CNTs?
The vendor landscape is maturing fast, but it reveals some telling strategic patterns. There's a clear divide between volume players chasing battery markets and niche specialists solving formulation problems.
Major MWCNT producers:
LG Chem (South Korea): Over 6,000 tons/year capacity with accelerated expansion timeline. CNT Plant 4 began operation in 2025, representing faster growth than originally projected. Vertically integrated into cathode manufacturing, which is smart. They're not just selling CNTs; they're controlling the entire value chain from additive to finished battery component.
Cnano (China): Volume leader with aggressive pricing (<$30/kg); supplies to battery and polymer markets. This is classic Chinese industrial strategy: scale first, optimize margins later. They're driving commodity pricing that's forcing everyone else to compete on cost or differentiate on quality.
Cabot (U.S.): Acquired Chinese producer SUSN and now sells into batteries and coatings. They bought their way into CNT manufacturing rather than building it. Shows how hard it is to compete with established Asian producers on greenfield capacity.
CHASM Advanced Materials (U.S.): Focused on iron-free, low-cost, and regionally produced CNTs. Offers dispersions, thermal pads, and formulations. They're betting on "clean" CNTs for battery applications where trace metals matter. Smart positioning as battery chemistry gets more demanding.
Major SWCNT producers:
OCSiAl (Luxembourg/Russia): Dominates SWCNT volume globally. "TUBALL" product line serves elastomers, coatings, and energy. Added significant capacity with new Serbian production facility that opened in 2024. They essentially have a monopoly on commercial SWCNTs, which explains why they can afford to keep expanding capacity. No real competition at scale.
Specialty vendors:
Arkema (France): "Graphistrength" MWCNTs for polymers and films.
Nanocyl (Belgium): (Acquired by Birla Carbon) NC7000 series used in ESD and conductive polymers.
Canatu (Finland): Focus on semiconductor and automotive, recently went public via SPAC
Upcatalst (Estonia): CNTs from Co2
The trend toward pre-dispersed forms tells you everything about where the real value is. Raw CNTs are becoming commoditized, so the money is shifting to formulation and application engineering. Companies are selling solutions, not just materials. The ones that figure out how to make CNTs plug-and-play for existing manufacturing processes will capture the premium.
What's missing? A major U.S. or European volume producer that can compete with Asian pricing. That gap might not matter for specialty applications, but it's a problem if CNTs become truly strategic for energy storage.
8. Strategic “Autonomy”?
If you read that, you may have thought like I did: I smell geopolitics. As CNTs get embedded in EV batteries, thermal systems, and advanced composites, who controls production will matter. You might say, "Come on, the volumes are tiny and they're just sprinkled into other materials. Not everything needs 'sovereign autonomy.'" Well.
Right now, most of the world's CNT capacity is concentrated in China and South Korea, with companies like Cnano and LG Chem supplying the bulk of global demand, especially for batteries. OCSiAl, the leading producer of single-walled CNTs, began in Russia and now operates out of Luxembourg with production in Serbia, but much of its early capacity remains geopolitically "complicated." The U.S. is only now scaling production, via players like CHASM and Cabot, while Europe's footprint remains small and focused on niche use cases.
A useful comparison: the gases used in semiconductor photolithography, like neon, argon, and fluorine. You never hear about them at product launches, but without them, chips don't get made. Neon powers the lasers that etch transistors; argon and fluorine clean the vacuum environments inside fabs. And until 2022, more than half of the world's purified neon came from just two companies in Ukraine. When war broke out, chipmakers scrambled. Prices spiked. Fabs rushed to find backup suppliers.
Now, a similar quiet dependency is forming around carbon nanotubes. They're not needed in huge volumes, but they're increasingly essential to battery performance, thermal interfaces, and lightweight composites. And nearly all of that capacity sits in East Asia. There is no meaningful strategic reserve in the U.S. or Europe.
If batteries are now national infrastructure (and they are), then CNTs could become the neon of the electrification era. If silicon anodes or solid-state batteries gain traction, CNT demand could surge. And if production stays concentrated in a few countries, they become a potential chokepoint.
Carbon nanotubes are not currently classified as critical raw materials by either the U.S. or the EU. The U.S. Department of Energy’s 2023 Critical Materials List and the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act both omit CNTs. However, CNTs are regulated as new chemical substances: in the U.S. they require EPA notification for new applications or exports; and in the EU mandates nanoform-specific registration and workplace risk assessments. Strategic trade controls also apply in some cases, the EU restricts CNT exports to Russia and Belarus under its sanctions regime.
But that could change. The combination of concentrated supply chains, growing demand from battery makers, and the strategic importance of energy storage is creating the conditions where CNTs might eventually be treated like other supply chain vulnerabilities. Whether that happens depends on how critical they become to batteries and whether geopolitical tensions escalate.
For now, CNTs are flying under the policy radar. But the supply chain reality is already here: if you're building batteries at scale, you're probably buying from Asia. That concentration risk is real, even if the politicians haven't caught up yet.
9. Is the market big and/or growing fast?
CNTs are now a real boy as I said. They’ve become a real, revenue-generating segment with clearly defined verticals and accelerating volume. The market is worth about $7 billion growing roughly 15% to $20-25 billion. I used to be a market researcher so I know these forecasts are always wrong. But for orders of magnitude this is what we are looking at.
The more interesting thing to look at is adoption drivers. Look at 2022 10-year forecasts for GPUs. Or nuclear reactors. Or electrical transformers. Forecasts are always right, until something changes.
So the thing to keep an eye on will be batteries. In 2023, global demand for CNTs in battery applications was roughly 9,000 metric tons. By 2032, we are looking at 50,000 to 70,000 tons per year driven by continued EV growth, the rise of silicon-rich anodes, and the potential commercialization of solid-state battery chemistries. Today, CNT loadings are typically around 0.1–0.3% by weight in cathodes, and 0.5–1.5% in silicon anodes. Even small changes in formulation can result in enormous volume growth due to the size of the global battery market. .
Outside batteries, demand could rise faster than expected in other sectors:
In composites and construction, CNT demand was around 2,000 tons in 2023 and is projected to grow to 7,000 to 10,000 tons by 2032 as concrete, asphalt, and composite resins begin incorporating CNTs for strength, durability, and EMI shielding. We are coming into a “Let’s Build” vibeshift, so I wouldn’t bet against a construction boom. How we pay for it all is another question. And actually China is the one to watch in terms of volumes.
In polymers and coatings, demand stood at about 1,500 tons in 2023 and will reach 4,000 to 6,000 tons by 2032, as CNTs continue replacing metal fillers and enabling anti-static, flame-retardant, or high-performance properties in plastics.
CNTs are on a path to becoming a multi-billion-dollar materials category through incremental adoption across industrial systems. And with falling prices and clearer integration paths, we should expect adoption to continue to build.
10. Investing in CNTs
So, where are we?
Well, CNTs aren’t a science project anymore. For deeptech investors (hey frens), the opportunity is to back enabling technologies that dramatically reduce the cost of CNTs or unlock their use in markets where performance really matters.
1. Advanced Manufacturing: Change the Cost Curve
Most production today still looks like scaled-up lab chemistry, not real industrial engineering. But that's shifting fast. The companies that crack low-cost, high-consistency production below $20/kg while hitting battery specs? They're going to own this space. And they need to build in flexibility for when things go sideways (feedstock shortages, new regulations, you name it). What to watch:
Catalyst breakthroughs: Ditch the iron, go single-metal, or make them recyclable. Less cleanup means lower costs.
Reactor innovation: Think modular fluidized beds, roll-to-roll processes, maybe even 3D printing continuous CNT sheets.
Feedstock flexibility: The holy grail is using CO₂, methane, or waste biomass as carbon sources. Suddenly CNTs become carbon-negative instead of carbon-intensive.
CNTs stop being a specialty additive and become a commodity input. We'll see them in packaging, textiles, construction materials. Not just the fancy stuff.
2. Formulation and Integration: Kill the Friction
Here's the secret: CNTs are a pain to work with. They clump up, need special dispersants, and what works in the lab often fails at scale. All that friction? That's where the margins hide. What to watch:
Formulation platforms: Plug-and-play concentrates for battery slurries, rubber compounds, thermoplastics. Make it idiot-proof.
Surface chemistry tricks: Functionalization that makes CNTs behave in polar solvents, cure at low temps, or play nice with biological systems.
Factory-friendly formats: Pre-compounded pellets, printable inks, sprayable pastes. Stuff that works with existing equipment.
This is the classic simplify adoption play. So OEMs don't need PhD chemists on staff. They get the performance boost without changing their processes.
3. Full-Stack: Enable the Impossible
The smartest CNT plays aren't about selling tubes. They're about using tubes to make products that couldn't exist before. What to watch:
Thermal pads that actually work in harsh environments (Carbice, CHASM are onto something here)
Transparent, bendable antennas for curved car surfaces or wearables (Canatu, FlexEnable)
Radiation-hard memory for edge computing and defense applications (Nantero's NRAM tech)
Self-healing composites for aerospace and robotics. I would love to see more in this space.
With this, we avoid commodity pricing and focus on creating new products.
11. Conclusion: CNTs are a thing now
Turns out carbon nanotubes are a real thing now. Serious volumes for some high-value, fast growing markets with EV batteries, aerospace and construction materials. My key learning is that CNTs are not just replacements, they are additives that seemingly make a ton of materials better. This makes the path to adoption much faster and easier than a “pure-play replacement” material.
The breakthrough wasn't some eureka moment in the lab. It was solving the boring stuff: manufacturability, consistency, and cost. For decades, CNTs were too expensive and too finicky to matter outside research. Now we can make them cheaper than ever, with costs still falling and quality improving.
What's next isn't more hype about miracle materials. It's the steady work of integration: better formulations, easier processing, and finding all the places where a 1% addition of CNTs unlocks 10× performance gains.
There will indeed be new materials discovered and synthesised by AI and that is a very viable investment area. Over the next couple of years there will be announcements of 1000x better X and 10,000x by Y over existing materials. But that will be the very beginning of a journey CNTs have been on for decades now.
Everyone is sleeping on it. Well not me.
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Nice article. You may want to add that CNTs are used as qubits, the building blocks of quantul computers. Check out C12 quantum electronics.
CNTs have always hovered at the edge of "almost here," but this reads like the moment they finally cross the threshold into industrial relevance. Especially struck by the point on sub-1% loadings—an underrated factor in material economics. Feels like we’re entering the era where "nanotech" quietly becomes infrastructure.