How a zigzag carbon nanotube grows

Qinghong Yuan; Feng Ding

doi:10.1002/anie.201500477

How a zigzag carbon nanotube grows

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2015 May 11;54(20):5924-8. doi: 10.1002/anie.201500477. Epub 2015 Mar 12.

Authors

Qinghong Yuan¹, Feng Ding

Affiliation

¹ Department of Physics, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200241 (China); Institute of Textiles and Clothing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong (China). qhyuan@phy.ecnu.edu.cn.

PMID: 25766145
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201500477

Abstract

Owing to the unique structure of zigzag (ZZ) carbon nanotubes (CNTs), their ring-by-ring growth behavior is different from that of chiral or armchair (AC) CNTs, on the rims of which kinks serve as active sites for carbon attachment. Through first-principle calculations, we found that, because of the high energy barrier of initiating a new carbon ring at the rim of a ZZ CNT, the growth rate of a ZZ CNT is proportional to its diameter and significantly (10-1000 times) slower than that of other CNTs. This study successfully explained the broad experimental observation of the lacking of ZZ CNTs in CNT samples and completed the theory of CNT growth.

Keywords: carbon nanotubes; chirality; kinetics; nucleation; zigzag carbon nanotubes.