Collapse of Carbon Nanotubes Due to Local High-pressure from Van Der Waals Encapsulation

Overview

Journal Nat Commun

Specialty Biology

Date 2024 Apr 25

PMID 38664428

Authors

Cheng Hu

Jiajun Chen

Xianliang Zhou

Yufeng Xie

Xinyue Huang

Zhenghan Wu

Saiqun Ma

Zhichun Zhang

Kunqi Xu

Neng Wan

Yueheng Zhang

Qi Liang

Zhiwen Shi

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Van der Waals (vdW) assembly of low-dimensional materials has proven the capability of creating structures with on-demand properties. It is predicted that the vdW encapsulation can induce a local high-pressure of a few GPa, which will strongly modify the structure and property of trapped materials. Here, we report on the structural collapse of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) induced by the vdW encapsulation. By simply covering CNTs with a hexagonal boron nitride flake, most of the CNTs (≈77%) convert from a tubular structure to a collapsed flat structure. Regardless of their original diameters, all the collapsed CNTs exhibit a uniform height of ≈0.7 nm, which is roughly the thickness of bilayer graphene. Such structural collapse is further confirmed by Raman spectroscopy, which shows a prominent broadening and blue shift in the Raman G-peak. The vdW encapsulation-induced collapse of CNTs is fully captured by molecular dynamics simulations of the local vdW pressure. Further near-field optical characterization reveals a metal-semiconductor transition in accompany with the CNT structural collapse. Our study provides not only a convenient approach to generate local high-pressure for fundamental research, but also a collapsed-CNT semiconductor for nanoelectronic applications.

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