Macrocycles power up carbon nanotubes

Carbon nanotubes are a green alternative to metallic catalysts. However, tuning their activity relies on difficult and invasive chemical processes that normally damage the nanotubes’ structure. Now, only a few years after reporting the first mechanically interlocked nanotube derivatives, Emilio Pérez and his team at the IMDEA Nanoscience Institute in Madrid, Spain, have envisioned how to use these non-covalent modifications to power up the catalytic activity of carbon nanotubes.