Ab initio simulations of oxygen atom insertion and substitutional doping of carbon nanotubes

High density oxidative plasma unzipping of multiwall carbon nanotubes

Oxidative plasma-assisted unzipping of multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) to transform them into petal like nano ribbons, releasing excessive strain with various plasma exposure times.

Nitrogen-mediated carbon nanotube growth: diameter reduction, metallicity, bundle dispersability, and bamboo-like structure formation

Carbon nanotube growth in the presence of nitrogen has been the subject of much experimental scrutiny, sparking intense debate about the role of nitrogen in the formation of diverse structural features, including shortened length, reduced diameters, and bamboo-like multilayered nanotubules. In this paper, the origin of these features is elucidated using a combination of experimental and theoretical techniques, showing that N acts as a surfactant during growth. N doping enhances the formation of smaller diameter tubes. It can also promote tube closure which includes a relatively large amount of N atoms into the tube lattice, leading to bamboo-like structures. Our findings demonstrate that the mechanism is independent of the tube chirality and suggest a simple procedure for controlling the growth of bamboo-like nanotube morphologies.

Simulated water adsorption in chemically heterogeneous carbon nanotubes

Grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations are used to study the adsorption of water in single-walled (10:10), (12:12), and (20:20) carbon nanotubes at 298 K. Water is represented by the extended simple point charge model and the carbon atoms as Lennard-Jones spheres. The nanotubes are decorated with different amounts of oxygenated sites, represented as carbonyl groups. In the absence of carbonyl groups the simulated isotherms are characterized by negligible amounts of water uptake at low pressures, sudden and complete pore filling once a threshold pressure is reached, and wide adsorption-desorption hysteresis loops. In the presence of a few carbonyl groups the simulated adsorption isotherms are characterized by pore filling at lower pressures and by narrower adsorption-desorption hysteresis loops compared to the results obtained in the absence of carbonyl groups. Our results show that the distribution of the carbonyl groups has a strong effect on the adsorption isotherms. For carbonyl groups localized in a narrow section the adsorption of water may be gradual because a cluster of adsorbed water forms at low pressures and grows as the pressure increases. For carbonyl groups distributed along the nanotube the adsorption isotherm is of type V.

Reentrant semiconducting behavior of zigzag carbon nanotubes at substitutional doping by oxygen dimers

The electronic structures of carbon nanotubes doped with oxygen dimers are studied using the ab initio pseudopotential density functional method. The fundamental energy gap of zigzag semiconducting nanotubes exhibits a strong dependence on both the concentration and configuration of oxygen-dimer defects that substitute for carbon atoms in the tubes and on the tube chiral index. For a certain type of zigzag nanotube when doped with oxygen dimers, the energy gap is closed and the tube becomes semimetallic. At higher oxygen-dimer concentrations the gap reopens, and the tube exhibits semiconducting behavior again. The change of the band gap of the zigzag tube is understood in terms of their response to the strains caused by the dimer substitutional doping.