Why do nanotubes grow chiral?

Abstract

Carbon nanotubes (CNT) hold enormous technological promise. It can only be harnessed if one controls in a practical way the CNT chirality, the feature of the tubular carbon topology that governs all the CNT properties---electronic, optical, mechanical. Experiments in catalytic growth over the last decade have repeatedly revealed a puzzling strong preference towards minimally-chiral (near-armchair) CNT, challenging any existing hypotheses and turning chirality control ever more tantalizing yet leaving its understanding elusive. Here we combine the CNT/catalyst interface thermodynamics with the kinetic growth theory to show that the unusual near-armchair peaks emerge from the two antagonistic trends: energetic preference towards achiral CNT/catalyst interfaces vs. faster growth of chiral CNT. This narrow distribution is profoundly related with the peaked behavior of a simple function, x*exp(-x).

References in corpus (4)

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• Graphene edge from A to Z - and the origins of nanotube chirality
• Understanding the nucleation mechanisms of Carbon Nanotubes in catalytic Chemical Vapor Deposition
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• Quantum mechanics of a constrained particle and the problem of prescribed geometry-induced potential
• Carbon Nanotube Fabrication at Industrial Scale: Opportunities and Challenges
• Dynamic instability of individual carbon nanotube growth revealed by in situ homodyne polarization microscopy
• Chirality-Dependent Kinetics of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes from Machine-Learning Force Fields
• Universal map of gas-dependent kinetic selectivity in carbon nanotube growth
• Chirality-Selective Transport of Benzene Molecules on Carbon Nanotubes
• Shape multistability in flexible tubular crystals through interactions of mobile dislocations
• Spontaneous Chiral Symmetry Breaking in Polydisperse Achiral Near-Rigid Nematogens