Naturally produced carbon nanotubes

Carbon nanotubes represent an impressive kind of materials with diverse unexpected properties, and different methods to artificially produce them have been developed. Recently, they have also been synthesized at low temperatures, demonstrating that these materials might exist in fluids or carbon rocks of the Earth's crust. A new type of natural encapsulated carbon nanotubes found in a coal-petroleum mix is presented. These findings show that all allotropic carbon forms known up to date can be produced in Nature, where pressure, catalysts particles, shear stress and parameters other than exclusively very high temperature, seem to play an important role for producing nanotubes. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.