Orthogonal orientation control of carbon nanotube growth.

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have attracted attention for their remarkable electrical properties and have being explored as one of the best building blocks in nano-electronics. A key challenge to realize such potential is the control of the nanotube growth directions. Even though both vertical growth and controlled horizontal growth of carbon nanotubes have been realized before, the growth of complex nanotube structures with both vertical and horizontal orientation control on the same substrate has never been achieved. Here, we report a method to grow three-dimensional (3D) complex nanotube structures made of vertical nanotube forests and horizontal nanotube arrays on a single substrate and from the same catalyst pattern by an orthogonally directed nanotube growth method using chemical vapor deposition (CVD). More importantly, such a capability represents a major advance in controlled growth of carbon nanotubes. It enables researchers to control the growth directions of nanotubes by simply changing the reaction conditions. The high degree of control represented in these experiments will surely make the fabrication of complex nanotube devices a possibility.

G<inf>2inf>-Monopoles with Singularities (Examples)

© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media DordrechtG2-Monopoles are solutions to gauge theoretical equations on G2-manifolds. If the G2-manifolds under consideration are compact, then any irreducible G2-monopole must have singularities. It is then important to understand which kind of singularities G2-monopoles can have. We give examples (in the noncompact case) of non-Abelian monopoles with Dirac type singularities, and examples of monopoles whose singularities are not of that type. We also give an existence result for Abelian monopoles with Dirac type singularities on compact manifolds. This should be one of the building blocks in a gluing construction aimed at constructing non-Abelian ones.