Their conductive properties and light weight makes them perfect for use in large scale battery components.
They have revolutionized polymer composites, as nanotubes bond very well to epoxy and create a material significantly stronger other current composite materials. The listed current applications for this are wind turbines, marine paints on ships, professional sports equipment such as skis, hockey skates, arrows, etc.
Vantablack is made from nanotubes.
I had to look this up, but apparently they are used in atomic force microscopes and have allowed us to discover tens of thousands of microbiological species that were undetected before along with revolutionized microbiological studies.
It’s a significantly lighter lightweight adhesive compared to glue and other tapes. Since the tape also uses Van der Waals forces, there are no chemical adhesives needed.
This is a limited list of course, but there are many further niches uses in various fields of research.
wind turbines,
Wind turbines are bad: they kill birds, the sounds mess with marine animals, and there’s no way to recycle the blades so they have to be buried underground.
marine paints on ships, professional sports equipment such as skis, hockey skates, arrows, etc.
These things existed before nanotubes, marginal improvement isn’t world-changing.
Vantablack
Rich people stuff.
there are many further niches uses
But that’s it: niche uses that don’t really affect people’s lives, so carbon nanotubes haven’t changed the world on a macro scale. We’re just not there yet as a society/species and we won’t be as long as there are hungry and homeless people on this planet.
Wind turbines are remarkable as wind power though, and the fossil fuel industry exaggerates the still unfortunate number of birds killed by them.
Fossil fuel industry is the one pushing for wind power, because guess what power is used to transport and install wind turbines. We need nuclear power, not wind power. A single medium-sized nuclear reactor can generate as much power as 900 wind turbines.
