On the Origin of Preferential Growth of Semiconducting Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

A correlation is observed between the diameters (d) of single-walled carbon nanotubes and the percentages of metallic and semiconducting tubes synthesized at 600 °C by plasma-assisted chemical vapor deposition. Small tubes (d ≈ 1.1 nm) show semiconductor percentages that are much higher than expecte...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The journal of physical chemistry. B 2005-04, Vol.109 (15), p.6968-6971
Main Authors: Li, Yiming, Peng, Shu, Mann, David, Cao, Jien, Tu, Ryan, Cho, K. J, Dai, Hongjie
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:A correlation is observed between the diameters (d) of single-walled carbon nanotubes and the percentages of metallic and semiconducting tubes synthesized at 600 °C by plasma-assisted chemical vapor deposition. Small tubes (d ≈ 1.1 nm) show semiconductor percentages that are much higher than expected for a random chirality distribution. Density functional theory calculations reveal differences in the heat of formation energies for similar-diameter metallic, quasi-metallic, and semiconducting nanotubes. Semiconducting tubes exhibit the lowest energies and the stabilization scales with ∼1/d 2. This could be a thermodynamic factor in the preferential growth of small semiconducting nanotubes.
ISSN:1520-6106
1520-5207
DOI:10.1021/jp050868h