Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 15, 2026

Engineering Molecular Recognition with Bio-mimetic Polymers on Single Walled Carbon Nanotubes
Published on: January 10, 2017
Aromaticity of carbon nanotubes
Wolfgang Linert1, Istvan Lukovits
1Applied Synthetic Chemistry, Vienna University of Technology, A-1060 Vienna, Getreidemarkt 9/163-AC, Austria. wlinert@mail.zserv.tuwien.ac.at
Abstract:
Carbon nanotubes are composed of cylindrical graphite sheets. Both nanotubes and graphite sheets are benzenoid derivatives composed of sp2 carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal pattern. Therefore both systems are aromatic. The extent of the aromatic character of a molecule G (here benzenoids) can be explained in terms of the number of possible Kekulé structures in G. In this work the Kekulé structures in carbon nanotubes and the corresponding, rectangular, graphite-sheets the tubes might originate from, were enumerated. It was shown that (2,2), (3,3), and (4,4) carbon nanotubes are more aromatic than the corresponding, rectangular, planar structures. This explains why it might be more difficult to saturate nanotubes by addition reactions than the respective, "narrow", graphite sheets.
Related Concept Videos
Aromatic Hydrocarbon Anions: Structural Overview
Due to the absence of continuous overlap of p...
NMR Spectroscopy of Aromatic Compounds
Aromatic Compounds: Overview
In 1825, Faraday isolated benzene...
Aromatic Hydrocarbon Cations: Structural Overview
Removing one hydrogen from the intervening CH2 group with both...
Criteria for Aromaticity and the Hückel 4n + 2 Rule
For the first time, Eric Hückel, a German chemical physicist, derived a set of structural features for a compound to be classified as aromatic. This is now known as Hückel’s rule or the 4n + 2 rule.
Basicity of Aromatic Amines

