Ask HN: What happened to carbon nanotubes?
I recently was led to an old (pre-2010) page describing the chemical properties of carbon nanotubes and fullerenes.
That page reminded me of the hype and optimism that was surrounding nanotubes in the '00s (at least in mainstream media) : For a time, they were on the covers of almost every pop-sci magazine, there were even some scifi novels written about the glorious, nanotube-based civilizations of the future. That page alone listed space elevators, 1nm-dense microelectronics and curing AIDS as expected applications (the latter for fullerenes) and predicted nanotube-based electronic components to be available in 2010.
Yet, if you look for info today about current progress on the technology, you find surprisingly little. Apparently facilities for industrial-scale production of nanotubes exist and there are techniques to produce nanotubes half a meter long. But... no one cares? From what I could find, it's used in some high-end bike frames, cosmetics and tennis racquets to slightly improve properties but... that's it?
A while ago, I came across another pop-sci article which already touted the next miracle material (I think long chains of copper atoms) in much the same way without even mentioning carbon nanotubes.
So as I don't have much knowledge in the field, I'd like to ask if anyone knows what happened? Have they just moved to the far right of the hype curve and development continues away from media attention or are there some actual roadblocks that have made the material less promising than it used to be?