Carbon in the pipeline

The current interest in carbon nanotubes (CNTs) can be traced back to the discovery of the football-shaped molecule C₆₀ (buckminster-fullerene or 'buckyball') in 1985 by Harry Kroto at the University of Sussex and Rick Smalley of Rice University, Texas. Six years later, Japanese chemist Sumio Iijima was trying to find out more about the structure of buckyballs, and was making them by vaporising carbon with a high voltage (an arc discharge). Unexpectedly, he found that he had also made similar but elongated, tube-like structures that had a 'cap' at each end comprising half a buckyball.