The study of carbon nanotubes, since their discovery by Iijima in 1991, has become a full research field with significant contributions from all areas of research in solid-state and molecular physics and also from chemistry. This Focus Issue in New Journal of Physics reflects this active research, and presents articles detailing significant advances in the production of carbon nanotubes, the study of their mechanical and vibrational properties, electronic properties and optical transitions, and electrical and transport properties. Fundamental research, both theoretical and experimental, represents part of this progress. The potential applications of nanotubes will rely on the progress made in understanding their fundamental physics and chemistry, as presented here. We believe this Focus Issue will be an excellent guide for both beginners and experts in the research field of carbon nanotubes.

It has been a great pleasure to edit the many excellent contributions from Europe, Japan, and the US, as well from a number of other countries, and to witness the remarkable effort put into the manuscripts by the contributors. We thank all the authors and referees involved in the process. In particular, we would like to express our gratitude to Alexander Bradshaw, who invited us put together this Focus Issue, and to Tim Smith and the New Journal of Physics staff for their extremely efficient handling of the manuscripts.

Focus on Carbon Nanotubes Contents

Transport theory of carbon nanotube Y junctions
R Egger, B Trauzettel, S Chen and F Siano

The tubular conical helix of graphitic boron nitride
F F Xu, Y Bando and D Golberg

Formation pathways for single-wall carbon nanotube multiterminal junctions
Inna Ponomareva, Leonid A Chernozatonskii, Antonis N Andriotis and Madhu Menon

Synthesis and manipulation of carbon nanotubes
J W Seo, E Couteau, P Umek, K Hernadi, P Marcoux, B Lukic, Cs Mikó, M Milas, R Gaál and L Forró

Transitional behaviour in the transformation from active end planes to stable loops caused by annealing
M Endo, B J Lee, Y A Kim, Y J Kim, H Muramatsu, T Yanagisawa, T Hayashi, M Terrones and M S Dresselhaus

Energetics and electronic structure of C₇₀-peapods and one-dimensional chains of C₇₀
Susumu Okada, Minoru Otani and Atsushi Oshiyama

Theoretical characterization of several models of nanoporous carbon
F Valencia, A H Romero, E Hernández, M Terrones and H Terrones

First-principles molecular dynamics study of the stretching frequencies of hydrogen molecules in carbon nanotubes
Gabriel Canto, Pablo Ordejón, Cheng Hansong, Alan C Cooper and Guido P Pez

The geometry and the radial breathing mode of carbon nanotubes: beyond the ideal behaviour
Jeno Kürti, Viktor Zólyomi, Miklos Kertesz and Guangyu Sun

Curved nanostructured materials
Humberto Terrones and Mauricio Terrones

A one-dimensional Ising model for C₇₀ molecular ordering in C₇₀-peapods
Yutaka Maniwa, Hiromichi Kataura, Kazuyuki Matsuda and Yutaka Okabe

Nanoengineering of carbon nanotubes for nanotools
Yoshikazu Nakayama and Seiji Akita

Narrow diameter double-wall carbon nanotubes: synthesis, electron microscopy and inelastic light scattering
R R Bacsa, E Flahaut, Ch Laurent, A Peigney, S Aloni, P Puech and W S Bacsa

Sensitivity of single multiwalled carbon nanotubes to the environment
M Krüger, I Widmer, T Nussbaumer, M Buitelaar and C Schönenberger

Characterizing carbon nanotube samples with resonance Raman scattering
A Jorio, M A Pimenta, A G Souza Filho, R Saito, G Dresselhaus and M S Dresselhaus

FTIR-luminescence mapping of dispersed single-walled carbon nanotubes
Sergei Lebedkin, Katharina Arnold, Frank Hennrich, Ralph Krupke, Burkhard Renker and Manfred M Kappes

Structural properties of Haeckelite nanotubes
Ph Lambin and L P Biró

Structural changes in single-walled carbon nanotubes under non-hydrostatic pressures: x-ray and Raman studies
Sukanta Karmakar, Surinder M Sharma, P V Teredesai, D V S Muthu, A Govindaraj, S K Sikka and A K Sood

Novel properties of 0.4 nm single-walled carbon nanotubes templated in the channels of AlPO₄-5 single crystals
Z K Tang, N Wang, X X Zhang, J N Wang, C T Chan and Ping Sheng

Lattice dynamics and symmetry of double wall carbon nanotubes
M Damnjanović, E Dobardžić, I Milošević, T Vuković and B Nikolić

Optical characterization of single-walled carbon nanotubes synthesized by catalytic decomposition of alcohol
Shigeo Maruyama, Yuhei Miyauchi, Yoichi Murakami and Shohei Chiashi

Electronic structure and the field emission mechanism of MgO-coated carbon nanotubes
Young-Woo Son, Seungwu Han and Jisoon Ihm

Controlled low-temperature growth of carbon nanofibres by plasma deposition
S Hofmann, B Kleinsorge, C Ducati and J Robertson

Electronic properties of intercalated single-wall carbon nanotubes and C₆₀ peapods
T Pichler, X Liu, M Knupfer and J Fink

Double resonance Raman spectroscopy of single-wall carbon nanotubes
R Saito, A Grüneis, Ge G Samsonidze, V W Brar, G Dresselhaus, M S Dresselhaus, A Jorio, L G Cançado, C Fantini, M A Pimenta and A G Souza Filho

Contacts, non-linear transport effects and failure in multi-walled carbon nanotubes
C Berger, Y Yi, J Gezo, P Poncharal and W A de Heer

Raman spectroscopy of small-diameter nanotubes
M Hulman, R Pfeiffer and H Kuzmany

Multiple-layer conduction and scattering property in multi-walled carbon nanotubes
K Tsukagoshi, E Watanabe, I Yagi, N Yoneya and Y Aoyagi

Trapping and aligning carbon nanotubes via substrate geometry engineering
Y M Wang, Wei-Qiang Han and A Zettl

Curvature effects on the structural, electronic and optical properties of isolated single-walled carbon nanotubes within a symmetry-adapted non-orthogonal tight-binding model
Valentin N Popov

Syntheses of single- and double-wall carbon nanotubes by the HTPAD and HFCVD methods
Toshiki Sugai, Toshiya Okazaki, Hiromichi Yoshida and Hisanori Shinohara

Ensemble averaging of conductance fluctuations in multiwall carbon nanotubes
B Stojetz, Ch Hagen, Ch Hendlmeier, E Ljubovic, L Forró and Ch Strunk

Electronic effects in scanning tunnelling microscopy of metal-filled multiwalled carbon nanotubes
Richard Czerw, Jiwen Liu and David L Carroll

Christian Thomsen, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany
Hiromichi Kataura, Tokyo Metropolitan University, Japan