Carbon nanotubes: from production to functional composites

In this paper, we present our work on carbon nanotubes, including our most recent results, in two important fields: production of carbon nanotubes itself and fabrication of carbon nanotube based composites with enhanced functionality. Firstly, we focus on the three main carbon nanotube production techniques, namely electric arc, laser evaporation and CVD. Based on our results, for each method the importance of the key parameters is highlighted. A comparison of production possibilities towards commercialisation concludes this section. Secondly, we report on the synthesis of a soluble and highly functional polyaniline/carbon nanotube composite and emphasise the general importance of conformational changes in order to achieve proper carbon nanotube–matrix interactions.