In this Account we highlight the experimental evidence in favor of our view that carbon nanotubes should be considered as a new macromolecular form of carbon with unique properties and with great potential for practical applications. We show that carbon nanotubes may take on properties that are normally associated with molecular species, such as solubility in organic solvents, solutionbased chemical transformations, chromatography, and spectroscopy. It is already clear that the nascent field of nanotube chemistry will rival that of the fullerenes.

Single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) reinforced polymer composite membranes have been fabricated using the electrospinning technique. Nanofibers with a diameter in the range 50−100 nm were obtained by electrospinning SWNT-filled polystyrene composites. TEM observations revealed incorporation of small SWNT bundles oriented parallel to the nanofiber axis. As-prepared (AP) and ester (EST) functionalized SWNTs have been electrospun with polyurethane (PU) to demonstrate the effect of the chemical functionalization of SWNTs on the mechanical properties of SWNT-reinforced composites. The tensile strength of EST-SWNT-PU membranes is enhanced by 104% as compared to electrospun pure polyurethane membranes, while an increase of only 46% was achieved incorporating AP−SWNT in the polyurethane matrix. The tangent moduli of AP-and EST-SWNT-PU membranes were found to be respectively 215% and 250% higher than the control polyurethane membranes.

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