From Concept to CNT: A Simple Way to Build Carbon Nanotubes in 3D

When modeling at the nanoscale, researchers, educators, and engineers often need to quickly generate accurate carbon nanotube (CNT) structures. Whether you’re simulating molecular transport, designing nanoelectromechanical systems, or visualizing nanoscale materials, building CNTs manually can become repetitive and error-prone.

The Nanotube Creator Extension in SAMSON offers a powerful solution: it lets you build single-walled and multi-walled carbon nanotubes instantly—either by drawing directly in the 3D viewport or using a more precise graphical interface.

What Makes This Useful?

Carbon Nanotubes are used widely in simulations related to material science, drug delivery, membrane modeling, and molecular electronics. Having a dedicated modeling workflow not only saves time but helps ensure structural accuracy when defining chirality (via n and m values) and geometry.

Build Nanotubes Interactively

Prefer an intuitive method? The interactive mode lets you create a nanotube by simply clicking and dragging in 3D:

  1. Press and drag the left mouse button in the viewport to define the axis and length of the nanotube (n value).
  2. After releasing the button, move the mouse to adjust the radius (m value), and click again to confirm.

Interactive CNT creation - Step 1

Interactive CNT creation - Step 2

The status bar offers live feedback while building, making it easy to determine the final structure parameters.

Use the Graphical Interface (GUI)

Need precise control? The built-in GUI lists key parameters you can modify manually, including:

  • Start / End Position: defines the axis in 3D space
  • n / m values: defines chirality and radius

Graphical Interface for CNT creation

Clicking the Build button then generates the tube directly in your scene.

Example: Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotube

Let’s say you’re building a multi-walled structure to simulate shielding or transport inside concentric layers. Here’s one way to do it:

  1. Set axis start and end: (0, 0, 0) to (40, 0, 0) (length = 40 Å).
  2. CNT 1: n = 6, m = 6 → Build.
  3. CNT 2: n = 10, m = 10 → Build.
  4. CNT 3: n = 14, m = 14 → Build.

The result is a triple-wall structure, all concentric, ready for simulation or visualization:

Multi-walled carbon nanotube

Final Thoughts

Whether you prefer the intuitive mouse-drag approach or need numerical precision, the Nanotube Creator offers flexibility depending on your workflow. Once your structure is built, you can simulate, export images, or combine your CNTs with other elements to create hybrid nanostructures.

Learn more in the full documentation.

SAMSON and all SAMSON Extensions are free for non-commercial use. You can download SAMSON at www.samson-connect.net.

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