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Imaging active topological defects in carbon nanotubes

Nature Nanotechnology volume 2, pages 358–360 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

A single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) is a wrapped single graphene layer, and its plastic deformation should require active topological defects—non-hexagonal carbon rings that can migrate along the nanotube wall. Although in situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM) has been used to examine the deformation of SWNTs1,2,3, these studies deal only with diameter changes and no atomistic mechanism has been elucidated experimentally. Theory predicts that some topological defects can form through the Stone–Wales transformation in SWNTs under tension at 2,000 K, and could act as a dislocation core4,5. We demonstrate here, by means of high-resolution (HR)-TEM with atomic sensitivity, the first direct imaging of pentagon–heptagon pair defects found in an SWNT that was heated at 2,273 K. Moreover, our in situ HR-TEM observation reveals an accumulation of topological defects near the kink of a deformed nanotube. This result suggests that dislocation motions or active topological defects are indeed responsible for the plastic deformation of SWNTs.

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Figure 1: HR-TEM images of the pentagon–heptagon pair defect.
Figure 2: Atomic arrangement of the Stone–Wales (SW) model.
Figure 3: Active topological defects observed by in situ HR-TEM.

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Acknowledgements

Chuanhong Jin and C. Ewels are gratefully acknowledged for fruitful discussions. The work on microscopy is partly supported by Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology (CREST).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Central 5, Tsukuba, 305-8565, Japan

    Kazu Suenaga, Hideaki Wakabayashi, Masanori Koshino, Yuta Sato, Koki Urita & Sumio Iijima

  2. ERATO-JST, c/o National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Central 5, Tsukuba, 305-8565, Japan

    Masanori Koshino

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  1. Kazu Suenaga
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  3. Masanori Koshino
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Contributions

K.S. and S.I. conceived and designed experiments. K.S., H.W., M.K., Y.S. and K.U. performed the experiments and analysed the data. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Kazu Suenaga.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Suenaga, K., Wakabayashi, H., Koshino, M. et al. Imaging active topological defects in carbon nanotubes. Nature Nanotech 2, 358–360 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2007.141

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