This essay is part of a collaborative series with author Lawrence Lundy-Bryan, who writes a newsletter called "State of the Future", which focuses on emerging technology paradigms.
Hello and welcome one and all, today I've got a good one for you.
You may have heard of carbon nanotubes, or maybe graphene, the so-called "wonder materials" that promised to revolutionize everything from electronics to material science. For a while, they seemed like classic overhype: cool science demos, TED talks, and then… nothing.
While researching datacentre cooling opportunities, I stumbled on carbon nanotubes. And I says to myself, I says, hmm, weren't they supposed to solve it all a while ago? So I dig in. And turns out, CNTs are a real boy now. After decades of promises and false starts, they are finally showing up in real-world products.
Once a novelty confined to labs and research papers, these one-dimensional carbon cylinders are now being manufactured by the ton and used in EV batteries, aerospace composites, thermal materials, and polymers. Costs are down. Consistency is up. And customers are using them for an ever expanding range of products across energy, electronics, infrastructure, and defense.
So I spoke to Dr. Alvin Orbaek White, Founder of TrimTabs, a few times over the past few months to figure out the what's what and who's who. This is one of my primers. The why, what, how, and who of CNTs in 2025, and why you might want to start paying attention.
There will be new materials discovered and synthesised by AI. But we have a wonder material already, at a higher technical and market readiness level, and everyone is sleeping on it. Well not me.
1. Why CNTs Matter Now
A carbon nanotube (CNT) is a tiny, hollow cylinder made of carbon atoms (like graphene rolled into a tube) offering outrageous strength, conductivity, and lightness.
The defining constraints of this decade: electrification, energy density, and sustainability, are all pushing industries toward high performance, thinner, and lighter components. So CNTs are making their way out into the real world.
We need better EV batteries. CNTs replace carbon black additives in cathodes and anodes. They reduce internal resistance, enable silicon anodes to survive 300% volume swings, and allow faster charging, greater mechanical stability and better energy density. And they do it at 0.1–1% loadings, freeing up room for active materials.
Computers are running very hot. CPUs, GPUs, EV power electronics, and data centers face brutal thermal loads. CNTs carry heat better than copper, especially along the length of the tube. When lots of them are lined up in the same direction, they can be used in thin layers or flexible films to replace messy thermal greases or bulky fillers.
Circular economy. CNTs are being used for recyclable, low-carbon cement, green coatings, and as additives in bio-based polymers. Some producers are working on capturing methane and converting it to CNTs + hydrogen.
CNTs are no longer a lab curiosity. They're now a specifiable and scalable component across a range of applications.
2. From Discovery to Deployment
We begin in 1952, when Soviet scientists first captured electron microscope images of carbon-based tubes. Nearly four decades later, in 1991, Japanese physicist Sumio Iijima published the first clear images and structural analysis of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), sparking global interest. In 1993, both Iijima and Donald Bethune at IBM independently reported single-walled CNTs (SWCNTs), which offered even more exotic electronic properties.
By the 2000s, CNTs were the darlings of advanced materials research. SWCNTs were hyped as the future of transistors. Bayer, Arkema, and Showa Denko built pilot plants in anticipation of a nanotech wave. But reality hit: CNTs clumped, yields were low, and prices stayed high. Most early ventures folded or scaled back. Bayer exited in 2013.
Now it's the 2020s. Demand for better batteries, composites, and thermal systems gave CNTs real traction. Costs fell. Manufacturing improved. SWCNTs, once a lab novelty, began scaling. Textbook stuff, nearly 30 years from discovery to real product-market fit. Hype fades, but progress compounds.
Just look at 3D printing. Hyped in the '90s, declared dead in the 2010s, now a $20B+ industry. Not because it changed everything, but because it found the few places it mattered most. CNTs may be on that same path.
3. CNT Fundamentals
Carbon nanotubes are cylindrical molecules made of sp²-bonded carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice — basically, graphene rolled into a tube.
There are two main types: SWCNTs (Single-Walled), which are one atom thick and electronically tunable (some are metallic, others semiconducting), and MWCNTs (Multi-Walled), which are concentric layers of graphene cylinders, easier to make, cheaper, and dominant in the market (90%+).
The physical properties of CNTs are remarkable compared to alternative industrial materials. CNTs are up to 300x stronger than steel by weight. They don't deform under load, making them ideal for reinforcing other materials. They carry heat better than copper or even diamond, especially along the length of the tube. They have electrical conductivity similar to metals, but are much lighter and more flexible. And they're lighter than aluminum, despite delivering far better performance.
This unique combination — extreme strength, stiffness, conductivity, and low weight — is what makes CNTs so attractive across sectors. No other material has this combination.
The challenge has never been performance; it's always been about cost, consistency, and scalability. A few technical barriers remain. CNTs naturally stick together into tangled bundles (uniformity), making them hard to mix evenly into liquids, polymers, or slurries. Most single-walled CNTs are produced as a random mix of metallic and semiconducting tubes (chirality), which creates unpredictability for precise electronic devices. And purity and reproducibility remain tricky, as tiny amounts of leftover metal catalyst or variation in tube length can create headaches in applications demanding strict reliability.
4. How CNTs Are Made
The first methods were brute force approaches: arc discharge (two graphite rods form an arc, vaporizing carbon into nanotubes — high-purity, low-yield) and laser ablation (a laser blasts carbon from a graphite target — precise and clean, but expensive and slow). These techniques proved CNTs could be made, but were never going to supply an industry.
The real game-changer was Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD). The concept is elegant: flow a carbon-rich gas like methane or ethylene over tiny metal catalyst particles at high heat (700–1200°C). Carbon atoms from the gas settle on the catalyst and start forming tubes, atom by atom.
Today's industrial CNT production relies on refined versions of CVD: Floating catalyst CVD (the workhorse for industrial-scale MWCNTs), Fixed-bed CVD (for vertically aligned "forests" of CNTs), and Plasma-enhanced CVD (for electronics-grade CNTs where precision matters more than volume).
The last 5–10 years brought major process innovation. Iron-free catalysts produce cleaner CNTs that require less purification. Fluidized bed and rotary kiln reactors operate continuously, 24/7, with tight quality control. Chirality control research is enabling selective growth of CNTs with specific electronic behaviors.
The result: CNTs with 99% carbon purity, <10 ppm metal contaminants, tunable tube length and surface chemistry, and costs down to $30–50/kg for MWCNTs (with <$20/kg on the near horizon).
5. CNTs vs. Other Materials
Carbon nanotubes can improve strength, heat flow, and electrical performance all in one material, often with less than 1% added to a product. CNTs work at <1% loadings while carbon black needs 5–15% and carbon fiber needs 30–60%.
CNTs form a "percolating network" at incredibly low concentrations. Once you hit the threshold, conductivity jumps dramatically. CNTs at $30–50/kg might seem expensive compared to carbon black at $1–3/kg, but you need 10–15× less material, so actual material cost per part can be similar or lower.
6. Where CNTs Are Used
Batteries are the commercial beachhead. Battery OEMs care about lower resistance, better charge rates, and longer cycle life. CNTs are now a standard additive in lithium-ion formulations. Replacing some portion of carbon black with CNTs dramatically improves electrical connectivity at loadings as low as 0.1–1 wt%. For silicon anodes, CNTs act as a flexible scaffold, holding particles together and maintaining contact during the 300% volume expansion. Forecasts suggest battery applications will consume 50,000+ metric tons of CNTs annually by 2032 — more than all other current use cases combined.
In construction and cement, at very low loadings (just 0.05–0.1% by weight), CNTs enhance durability with compressive and flexural strength improvements of 15–35%. They help bridge microcracks during curing and loading, increase service life, and lower porosity and water permeability. Because CNTs are conductive, they can also turn concrete into a sensor, detecting strain, vibration, or cracking in real-time.
In aerospace and composites, CNTs are used in prepregs and resin systems (increasing interlaminar strength), EMI shielding, and lightning strike protection. NASA, Airbus, Boeing, Lockheed, and others are already trialing CNT-reinforced materials across platforms.
Emerging use cases include wearables and sensors (flexible, conductive CNTs embedded in fabrics and thin films), thermal interface materials (TIMs with up to 5–10 W/mK vs. standard thermal paste at 1–4 W/mK), and conductive plastics (in automotive interiors, battery housings, and tires).
7. Who's Selling CNTs?
Major MWCNT producers include LG Chem (South Korea, over 6,000 tons/year capacity, vertically integrated into cathode manufacturing), Cnano (China, volume leader with aggressive pricing <$30/kg), Cabot (U.S., acquired Chinese producer SUSN), and CHASM Advanced Materials (U.S., focused on iron-free CNTs for battery applications).
OCSiAl (Luxembourg) dominates SWCNT volume globally with their "TUBALL" product line and ~97% global share of commercial SWCNTs.
Specialty vendors include Arkema (France), Nanocyl (Belgium), Canatu (Finland), and Upcatalst (Estonia, producing CNTs from CO₂).
The trend toward pre-dispersed forms tells you where the real value is. Raw CNTs are becoming commoditized, so the money is shifting to formulation and application engineering.
8. Strategic Autonomy
Most of the world's CNT capacity is concentrated in China and South Korea, with companies like Cnano and LG Chem supplying the bulk of global demand. A useful comparison: the gases used in semiconductor photolithography — like neon, argon, and fluorine — are invisible at product launches, but without them, chips don't get made. Until 2022, more than half of the world's purified neon came from just two companies in Ukraine. When war broke out, chipmakers scrambled.
A similar quiet dependency is forming around carbon nanotubes. They're not needed in huge volumes, but they're increasingly essential to battery performance, thermal interfaces, and lightweight composites. And nearly all of that capacity sits in East Asia. If batteries are now national infrastructure (and they are), then CNTs could become the neon of the electrification era.
Carbon nanotubes are not currently classified as critical raw materials by either the U.S. or the EU. But that could change as CNTs become more critical to batteries and geopolitical tensions escalate.
9. Market Size and Growth
The CNT market is worth about $7 billion, growing roughly 15% annually toward $20–25 billion. Batteries are the key driver: from roughly 9,000 metric tons in 2023 to 50,000–70,000 tons per year by 2032. In composites and construction, demand is projected to grow from 2,000 tons in 2023 to 7,000–10,000 tons by 2032. In polymers and coatings, from 1,500 tons in 2023 to 4,000–6,000 tons by 2032.
10. Investing in CNTs
The opportunity breaks into three plays. First, advanced manufacturing: companies that crack low-cost, high-consistency production below $20/kg while hitting battery specs, through catalyst breakthroughs, reactor innovation, and feedstock flexibility using CO₂ or methane. Second, formulation and integration: plug-and-play concentrates, surface chemistry tricks, and factory-friendly formats that eliminate the friction of working with CNTs. Third, full-stack: enabling products that couldn't exist before — thermal pads that work in harsh environments, transparent bendable antennas for curved surfaces, radiation-hard memory, and self-healing composites.
11. Conclusion
Turns out carbon nanotubes are a real thing now. Serious volumes for some high-value, fast growing markets with EV batteries, aerospace and construction materials. CNTs are not just replacements — they are additives that make a ton of materials better. This makes the path to adoption much faster and easier than a pure-play replacement material.
The breakthrough wasn't some eureka moment in the lab. It was solving the boring stuff: manufacturability, consistency, and cost. For decades, CNTs were too expensive and too finicky to matter outside research. Now we can make them cheaper than ever, with costs still falling and quality improving.
What's next isn't more hype about miracle materials. It's the steady work of integration: better formulations, easier processing, and finding all the places where a 1% addition of CNTs unlocks 10× performance gains.
Everyone is sleeping on it. Well not me.
