Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are often talked about like far-off science fiction— powering space elevators, carbon nanotube computers, or breathtaking academic prototypes. But the reality is far more immediate: CNTs are already at work in today’s most demanding industries, creating real performance advantages and real revenue.
At Carbice, we’ve spent more than a decade proving that CNTs aren’t just the future — they’re creating value today. And their momentum is accelerating.
Why CNTs Aren’t Just a Future Dream
CNTs have been studied for nearly 40 years, and are arguably one of the most invested in materials in the history of human discovery for their vast potential, but only in the past decade have they transitioned from research and development fascination to real world commercial application. The material’s unique combination of strength, thermal conductivity, electrical performance, and mechanical resilience gives it a versatility that few technologies can match.
Today, CNTs are in commercial use across several major sectors:
- Thermal interface materials (TIMs):
As chips become hotter and more power-dense — especially in data centers and AI hardware — traditional TIMs struggle to survive thermal and mechanical stress. Vertically-aligned CNT-based TIMs like the Carbice Pad maintain performance over time and resist degradation that plagues legacy thermal interface materials, which are made from structurally less stable composites. The key difference in the Carbice Pad technology versus prior efforts in CNT TIMs is the use of novel growth on metal foil core that anchors the CNTs on one side in their vertical position, and the use of proprietary CNT coatings that keep the CNT structure elastic and enables excellent surface contact to CNT tips.
Carbice's vertically aligned carbon nanotube solution cut to fit various interfaces. - Battery additives:
Carbon nanotubes improve electrical conductivity and mechanical stability when mixed into anode and cathode materials. For lithium-ion batteries used in EVs, grid storage, and UPS systems, CNTs help batteries charge, discharge, and cycle more efficiently. While aligned CNTs might be the ideal form factor for these applications due to more efficient electron flow, the industry has struggled to deliver an aligned form factor at scale in the past and has focused instead on modest performance gains that can be achieved by mixing CNT powder into existing battery materials. The achievable manufacturing scale has become a key factor in gaining market share in this space to drive down cost. - Structural composites:
Even at low loadings, CNTs dramatically strengthen polymers while reducing weight, benefiting aerospace, automotive, power, and high-performance industrial applications. Some have even started to include CNTs in concrete to increase strength per volume leading to thinner slabs and less material use. Just like with battery additives, manufacturing scale to drive down cost is a key factor for both enabling more structural applications and winning market share as a provider. Being able to provide performance advantages with longer CNTs is a key potential differentiator too as it allows for less CNT material to be used while achieving similar performance enhancements.
CNTs uniquely combine strength, flexibility, and conductivity, making them a foundational technology for next-generation devices and industrial infrastructure.
CNT Dispatch, a respected Substack newsletter dedicated to carbon nanotube innovation, recently highlighted the urgent need for CNTs in modern data centers.
In Edition #005: Nanotubes in the Datacentre, the authors argue that performance limits are stacking up across the entire computing infrastructure — from chips, to cooling hardware, to the mechanical reliability of server components. CNTs, they note, offer a unique combination of thermal and mechanical advantages that help address these bottlenecks.
Rather than imagining far-future scenarios, the Dispatch underscores the practical, immediate value of CNTs — a view that mirrors Carbice’s real-world deployments and potential for future growth leveraging the Carbice manufacturing and product technology platforms.
CNTs uniquely combine strength, flexibility, and conductivity, making them a foundational technology for next-generation devices and industrial infrastructure.
A Track Record That Builds Confidence: Carbice’s Leadership in CNTs
One of the strongest validators of CNT technology is the caliber of leaders driving it forward.
Dr. Baratunde (Bara) Cola, CEO and Founder of Carbice, has been at the forefront of CNT research since 1999. After completing his Ph.D. at Purdue in 2008 with 25 peer-reviewed publications, he quickly became one of the world’s leading experts in aligned CNT fabrication and advanced materials for energy and thermal technologies. He and his team even hold a Guinness World Record for making the fastest rectifier in the world on the tip on a single CNT, as described in Nature Nanotechnology. Bara was awarded the 2017 Alan T. Waterman Award as the Top Scientist and Engineer in the Nation for his leadership and breakthrough work on aligned CNTs.
Since founding Carbice in 2011, Bara has grown the company from a small Georgia Tech lab into the largest vertically aligned carbon nanotube production center in the world, with a 20,000 sq ft global headquarters in Atlanta and teams in Austin, TX, Silicon Valley and Toulouse, FR. Carbice® Space Pad and Carbice® Pad are now repeat purchased across aerospace, defense, industrial power, and high-performance electronics.
In short: Carbice isn’t just participating in the CNT market — it’s shaping it.
CEO & Founder Dr. Baratunde Cola
Carbice's manufacturing facility in Atlanta, GA
CNTs Don’t Just Grow Markets they Create New Markets
While reports suggest a 12.4% growth in demand for raw CNT materials over this decade, evidence in the thermal and mechanical interface market driven by Carbice suggest that CNTs have the potential to create new markets that could not be imagined before. The value created by the CNTs in aligned form factors like interface pads has led to elimination of several expensive manufacturing processes and steps across the trillion-dollar contract manufacturing market enabling pricing on new, unanticipated value at customers. Simple uses of CNT powder in battery additives are reported to grow at CAGR of 38%, reflecting how central CNTs are becoming in lithium-ion battery manufacturing, but the untold potential in CNTs is the elimination of cost, waste, redundancy, and loss of revenue in the entire industrial infrastructure from data centers to satellites to automobiles to concrete foundations. Across all sources one thing is clear: CNTs are moving from niche material to mainstream industrial necessity.
CNTs are moving from niche material to mainstream industrial necessity.
Looking Ahead: The Next Decade of CNT Innovation
The pace of CNT advancement is unfolding across several major themes:
- Scaling production:
New synthesis and manufacturing methods are improving cost, consistency, and yield, positioning CNTs for broad adoption.
- Expanded industrial adoption:
Data centers, EV makers, aerospace companies, and industrial electronics OEMs are increasingly shifting toward CNT-based materials for durability and performance.
- Emerging capabilities:
Technologies such as structural composites, flexible electronics, and advanced cooling architecture are entering early commercial stages — and CNTs are central to these breakthroughs.
- Systems-level impact:
Wider CNT adoption means cooler chips, longer-lasting batteries, stronger materials, and reduced total ownership costs across sectors.
Where Carbice Fits Into This Future
Carbon nanotubes are no longer waiting for scientific discovery or the emergence of new markets — they’re creating measurable value today and creating new markets now. Carbice’s vertically aligned CNT platform is already powering next-generation aerospace, industrial, and data center technologies through products like the Carbice® Space Pad and Carbice® Pad. And Carbice’s existing manufacturing platform is easily adapted to efficiently making the masterbatched CNT resins needed for lightweighting in the aerospace and automative industries as well as electrical property modification of the massive polymer composite market. The Carbice technology platform is uniquely positioned to enable endless innovation and market capture and creation, to be the eventual global leader in CNTs.
If you want to understand how CNTs will reshape thermal management, durability, and performance across industries — or how Carbice is making that future real — we’d love to share more.
