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Carbon nanotube production - the big picture

John Hart of the US-based World Technology Evaluation Centre (WTEC) put some figures to the global production of carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Hart’s industry snapshot was part of a symposium dedicated to defining the CNT sector and chaired by Clayton Teague - director of the US National NanoTechnology Co-ordination Office.

Starting with multiwalled CNTs, WTEC estimates that North America has an installed capacity of 74 tonne/year compared with 170 tonne/year for Asia and 27 tonne/year for Europe. A similar trend follows for the more revolutionary, but harder to produce single walled variety with 1.5 tonne/year for North America, 5.3 tonne/year for Asia and 0.1 tonne/year for Europe.

WTEC’s evaluation panel has travelled the world visiting production facilities and is set to publish its findings in full and for free next month. Hart singled out the Tsinghua-Foxconn Nanotechnology Research Centre in China as being one to watch for the future. Funded by Foxconn Technology Group, an assembler of components for Apple, the research centre has filed 700 patent applications over the past 36 months.

Posted by James Tyrrell on May 22, 2007 11:05 PM | Permalink