No Arabic abstract
Three typical one-dimensional (1D)/quasi-1D nanocarbons, linear carbon chains, carbon nanotubes, and graphene nanoribbons have been proven to grow inside single-wall carbon nanotubes. This gives rise to three types of hybrid materials whose behaviour and properties compared among each other are far from understood. After proving successful the synthesis of these nanostructured materials in recently published work, we have now been able to study their oxidation stability systematically by using resonance Raman spectroscopy. Surprisingly, the linear carbon chains, which have been theoretically predicted to be very unstable, are actually thermally stable up to 500 {deg}C assisted by the protection of the carbon nanotube hosts. Besides, longer linear carbon chains inside narrower CNTs are more stable than the shorter ones inside larger tubes, suggesting that the thermal stability not only depends on the length of linear carbon chains alone, but it is correlated with the confinement of the host tubes in a more complicated manner. In addition, graphene nanoribbons come overall in view as the most stable confined structures. On the other hand, peculiarities like the higher stability of the (6,5) CNT over its (6,4) counterpart allow this study to provide a solid platform for further studies on the application of these 1D nanocarbons (including true 1D linear carbon chains) at ambient conditions.
We derive the generalized magneto-absorption spectra for curved graphene nanorib- bons and carbon nanotubes by using the Peierls tight-binding model. The main spectral characteristics and the optical selection rules result from the cooperative or competitive relationships between the geometric structure and a magnetic field. In curved ribbons, the dominant selection rule remains unchanged during the variation of the curvature. When the arc angle increases, the prominent peaks are split, with some even vanishing as the angle exceeds a critical value. In carbon nanotubes, the angular-momentum coupling induces extra selection rules, of which more are revealed due to the increase of either (both) of the factors: tube diameter and field strength. Particularly once the two factors exceed certain critical values, the optical spectra could reflect the quasi-Landau-level structures. The identifying features of the spec- tra provide insight into optical excitations for curved systems with either open or closed boundary condition.
We present measurements of the $D$ Raman mode in graphene and carbon nanotubes at different laser excitation energies. The Raman mode around 1050 - 1150,cm$^{-1}$ originates from a double-resonant scattering process of longitudinal acoustic (LA) phonons with defects. We investigate its dependence on laser excitation energy, on the number of graphene layers and on the carbon nanotube diameter. We assign this Raman mode to so-called inner processes with resonant phonons mainly from the $Gamma-K$ high-symmetry direction. The asymmetry of the $D$ mode is explained by additional contributions from phonons next to the $Gamma-K$ line. Our results demonstrate the importance of inner contributions in the double-resonance scattering process and add a fast method to investigate acoustic phonons in graphene and carbon nanotubes by optical spectroscopy.
We have applied the quantum Monte Carlo method and tight-binding modelling to calculate the binding energy of biexcitons in semiconductor carbon nanotubes for a wide range of diameters and chiralities. For typical nanotube diameters we find that biexciton binding energies are much larger than previously predicted from variational methods, which easily brings the biexciton binding energy above the room temperature threshold.
We use the robust nearest-neighbour tight-binding approximation to study on the same footing interband dipole transitions in narrow-bandgap carbon nanotubes and graphene nanoribbons. It is demonstrated that curvature effects in metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes and edge effects in gapless graphene nanoribbons not only open up bang gaps, which typically correspond to THz frequencies, but also result in a giant enhancement of the probability of optical transitions across these gaps. Moreover, the matrix element of the velocity operator for these transitions has a universal value (equal to the Fermi velocity in graphene) when the photon energy coincides with the band-gap energy. Upon increasing the excitation energy, the transition matrix element first rapidly decreases (for photon energies remaining in the THz range but exceeding two band gap energies it is reduced by three orders of magnitude), and thereafter it starts to increase proportionally to the photon frequency. A similar effect occurs in an armchair carbon nanotube with a band gap opened and controlled by a magnetic field applied along the nanotube axis. There is a direct correspondence between armchair graphene nanoribbons and single-walled zigzag carbon nanotubes. The described sharp photon-energy dependence of the transition matrix element together with the van Hove singularity at the band gap edge of the considered quasi-one-dimensional systems make them promising candidates for active elements of coherent THz radiation emitters. The effect of Pauli blocking of low-energy interband transitions caused by residual doping can be suppressed by creating a population inversion using high-frequency (optical) excitation.
Ultra long linear carbon chains of more than 6000 carbon atoms have recently been synthesized within double-walled carbon nanotubes, and they show a promising new route to one--atom--wide semiconductors with a direct band gap. Theoretical studies predicted that this band gap can be tuned by the length of the chains, the end groups, and their interactions with the environment. However, different density functionals lead to very different values of the band gap of infinitely long carbyne. In this work, we applied resonant Raman excitation spectroscopy with more than 50 laser wavelengths to determine for the first time the band gap of long carbon chains encapsulated inside DWCNTs. The experimentally determined band gaps ranging from 2.253 to 1.848 eV follow a linear relation with Raman frequency. This lower bound is the smallest band gap of linear carbon chains observed so far. The comparison with experimental data obtained for short chains in gas phase or in solution demonstrates the effect of the DWCNT encapsulation, leading to an essential downshift of the band gap. This is explained by the interaction between the carbon chain and the host tube, which greatly modifies the chains bond length alternation.