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Researchers filmed carbon nanotubes turning as they grew, according to a 2009 report with the headline “Nanotube growth caught on camera.” The report says atoms were added at the growing tip in a regular pattern, an observation it presented as support for a screw-dislocation-like growth model. A later, separate study used in situ optical microscopy and deep learning to track thousands of individual nanotubes as they grew, paused, or etched.
What did the 2009 video show?
The 2009 report says the nanotubes turned during growth and that atoms joined at the growing tip in a regular pattern. It interpreted those observations as supporting a screw-dislocation-like (SDL) model: a proposed growth mechanism in which a dislocation in the growing structure is associated with continued, helical addition.
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The report is brief. It does not identify the original research paper or researchers, and it does not give enough experimental detail to establish the camera, resolution, imaging method, or conditions. The turning and atom-addition account should therefore be read as what that news report says, not as a mechanism independently confirmed by the report’s available detail.
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A separate 2025 study took an optical approach: it recorded individual nanotubes during synthesis using in situ homodyne polarization microscopy, then analyzed the videos to measure their growth behavior. The researchers synthesized horizontally aligned nanotubes in a miniature chemical vapor deposition cell, using ST-cut quartz, iron nanoparticles, ethanol as the carbon precursor, and argon as the carrier gas.
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The custom microscope used crossed polarizers and a long-distance objective. A digital camera recorded images at rates up to 40 frames per second. These are specifications of the 2025 setup, not details established for the 2009 video.
What did the later videos reveal?
Across more than 50 in situ videos, the 2025 team analyzed more than 2,000 individual nanotubes. They extracted growth rates, lifetimes, and final segment lengths. The reported behaviors included transitions among growth, pauses, and etching even under nominally constant synthesis conditions; this does not mean that every nanotube followed the same sequence.
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The study shows how optical video can provide kinetic measurements across many individual nanotubes. That is different from resolving atomic-scale structural changes: a tracked optical signal can reveal when a nanotube grows or pauses without, by itself, establishing the atomic mechanism behind that behavior.
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How much of the tracking was automated?
The workflow enhanced image contrast and used a Mask R-CNN deep-learning system to recognize and track image features. Researchers then manually verified tracks and labeled complex events, because pauses, shrinkage, and structural changes can make automated assignments difficult.
For its own workflow comparison, the paper reports approximately a 15-fold throughput increase for kinetic extraction: manual extraction took about six hours per video at five-second time resolution, compared with two hours at one-second resolution using the deep-learning workflow. Those are the authors’ reported results for this particular analysis, not a general benchmark for microscopy or a fully hands-off system.
How does this fit with atomic-scale observations?
Other work has reported in situ observations of iron catalyst particles at the atomic level during nanotube growth. For example, the 2009 Nano Letters paper “Site-Specific Fabrication of Fe Particles for Carbon Nanotube Growth” offers related background on direct observation. Available information does not establish that it is the paper behind the “Nanotube growth caught on camera” headline.
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The distinction is what each approach can measure: atomic-scale studies examine catalyst particles and structural changes, while the 2025 optical work tracks individual nanotubes and derives growth kinetics from video. They are related lines of investigation, not a head-to-head comparison or interchangeable measurements.
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Not with an ordinary consumer camera or microscope. The reported studies use specialized laboratory imaging integrated with nanotube synthesis. The 2025 paper notes that supplementary image sequences can be viewed using the free ImageJ software, but viewing research footage is not the same as reproducing the imaging or growth experiment.
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