Sapphire can facilitate useful nanotube production

It would appear from reports at SpaceDaily and PhysOrg that scientists led by Chongwu Zhou at USC have determined how to grow single walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT) on specific planes of a sapphire crystal. This may have distinct advantages as it potentially allows one to put the wires down first and the computational elements (currently transistors) down second in the production of nanoelectronics. This is generally the inverse of current microelectronic production methods.