2015-05-042015-05-042013-09-24Ziegler, Kirk J., Rauwald, Urs, Hauge, Robert H., Schmidt, Howard K., Smalley, Richard E., Kittrell, Carter W. and Gu, Zhenning, "Bulk cutting of carbon nanotubes using electron beam irradiation." Patent US8540959B2. issued 2013-09-24. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1911/80134.https://hdl.handle.net/1911/80134According to some embodiments, the present invention provides a method for attaining short carbon nanotubes utilizing electron beam irradiation, for example, of a carbon nanotube sample. The sample may be pretreated, for example by oxonation. The pretreatment may introduce defects to the sidewalls of the nanotubes. The method is shown to produces nanotubes with a distribution of lengths, with the majority of lengths shorter than 100 tun. Further, the median length of the nanotubes is between about 20 nm and about 100 nm.5 ppengUtility patentUS8540959B2