Single-Atom Scale Structural Selectivity in Te Nanowires Encapsulated Inside Ultranarrow, Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

Abstract

Extreme nanowires (ENs) represent the ultimate class of crystals: They are the smallest possible periodic materials. With atom-wide motifs repeated in one dimension (1D), they offer a privileged perspective into the physics and chemistry of low-dimensional systems. Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) provide ideal environments for the creation of such materials. Here we present a comprehensive study of Te ENs encapsulated inside ultranarrow SWCNTs with diameters between 0.7 nm and 1.1 nm. We combine state-of-the-art imaging techniques and 1D-adapted ab initio structure prediction to treat both confinement and periodicity effects. The studied Te ENs adopt a variety of structures, exhibiting a true 1D realization of a Peierls structural distortion and transition from metallic to insulating behavior as a function of encapsulating diameter. We analyze the mechanical stability of the encapsulated ENs and show that nanoconfinement is not only a useful means to produce ENs but also may actually be necessary, in some cases, to prevent them from disintegrating. The ability to control functional properties of these ENs with confinement has numerous applications in future device technologies, and we anticipate that our study will set the basic paradigm to be adopted in the characterization and understanding of such systems.

Encapsulated nanowires: Boosting electronic transport in carbon nanotubes

“…Transport is studied by solving the set of parameter-free Boltzmann transport equations (BTE) for coupled dynamics of electrons and phonons, whilst all relevant scattering rates are calculated ab initio with densityfunctional perturbational theory (DFPT). This route to enhanced transport is attractive due to increasingly well-established methods for growth of 1D crystals inside CNTs [15][16][17][18][19] and assembly of nanowires into integrated devices [20,21]. A broad variety of materials have been encapsulated in this manner, allowing for different degrees of phonon-phonon coupling with the encapsulating CNTs.…”

In Situ Electron Beam Amorphization of Sb2Te3 within Single Walled Carbon Nanotubes

“…Narrow carbon nanotubes with diameters in the range 0.7-1.1 nm have very recently been shown to produce newly observed pure 1D forms of crystal growth (i.e. linear chains of CsI [24] and atomic coils of Te or Be [25,26] in SWNTS) that may not be so readily interpretable as they cannot form crystallites 2-5 atomic layers thick but they will nonetheless improve our knowledge of phase formation on an even smaller scale than reported here. Encapsulated crystals of 2-5 atomic layers in thickness will allow us to observe crystalline to amorphous phase transitions at the smallest possible scale an this is the main conclusion from our study.…”

Molecular Magnets Based on Graphenes and Carbon Nanotubes

“…The Terbium(III) bis‐phthalocyanine (TbPc 2 ) SMMs grafted on a SWNT can behave as a spin valve device (Figure A(i)), with a high‐resistance and a low‐resistance state available that can be tuned via the external magnetic field (Figure A(ii)). The carbon nanotube internal cavities are suitable for hosting SMMs, which can avoid the strong decoherence from surroundings . Figure B(i) shows the schematic of the encapsulation of Mn 12 O 12 (O 2 CCH 3 ) 16 (H 2 O) 4 (Mn 12 Ac) molecular magnet into a carbon nanotube .…”