Carbon nanotubes and fullerenes articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    Incommensurate pairing is a type of stereoisomerism, observed in carbon bilayers, that arises from the twisted orientations of the graphitic layers. Here, the authors create a finite molecular version of an incommensurate carbon bilayer in the form of two concentrically assembled cylindrical molecules.

    • Taisuke Matsuno
    • , Yutaro Ohtomo
    •  & Hiroyuki Isobe

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Encasing a single atom within a fullerene (C60) cage can create a robustly packaged single atomic spin system. Here, the authors perform electron paramagnetic resonance on a single encased spin using a diamond NV-center, demonstrating the first steps in controlling single spins in fullerene cages.

    • Dinesh Pinto
    • , Domenico Paone
    •  & Klaus Kern

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fast and specific detection of pathogenic bacteria is needed to combat infections. Here the authors generate an array of near-infrared biosensors based on carbon nanotubes to detect released metabolites and virulence factors and use them to distinguish pathogens such as S. aureus and P. aeruginosa.

    • Robert Nißler
    • , Oliver Bader
    •  & Sebastian Kruss

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The synthesis of hydrocarbons with attractive electronic structures remains challenging. Here, the authors describe the synthesis and properties of the C70 fragment as-indaceno[3,2,1,8,7,6-ghijklm]terrylene, which exhibits near-infrared (NIR) absorption.

    • Yuki Tanaka
    • , Norihito Fukui
    •  & Hiroshi Shinokubo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Diatomic carbon (C2) is historically an elusive chemical species, considered to require high physical energy for its generation. Here, the authors describe the first room-temperature chemical synthesis of C2 and present experimental evidence for its singlet biradical (quadruple bonding) character and role as a molecular element of nanocarbons.

    • Kazunori Miyamoto
    • , Shodai Narita
    •  & Masanobu Uchiyama

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Replacing carbon atoms in nanocarbons with heteroatoms alters their intrinsic properties, and nitrogen-doped nanocarbons attract much attention in various fields. Here, the authors synthesize a discrete nitrogen-doped nanotube molecule and clarify its structure to reveal unique features of nitrogen dopants.

    • Koki Ikemoto
    • , Seungmin Yang
    •  & Hiroyuki Isobe

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Carbon nanotube mechanical resonators are difficult to couple optomechanically to microwave fields. Here, the authors exploit Coulomb blockade’s nonlinearity to amplify the single photon coupling between a suspended carbon nanotube quantum dot and a microwave cavity by several orders of magnitude.

    • Stefan Blien
    • , Patrick Steger
    •  & Andreas K. Hüttel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A better understanding of processes responsible for photocurrent generation in semiconductors and nanocomposites is essential in many applications. Here, authors use a ZnO-based hybrid material to demonstrate an unusual photocurrent switching effect induced by varying irradiation intensities.

    • Agnieszka Podborska
    • , Maciej Suchecki
    •  & Konrad Szaciłowski

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Chlorine evolution reaction (CER) is a key electrochemical reaction for chemical, pulp, and paper industries, and water treatments. Here, the authors report that an atomically dispersed Pt−N4 site can catalyse CER with high activity and selectivity under a wide range of Cl– concentrations and pH.

    • Taejung Lim
    • , Gwan Yeong Jung
    •  & Sang Hoon Joo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Detection of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) biomarkers from patients’ blood is challenging because these are present in very low concentrations in the plasma. Here the authors develop a sensor array of densely aligned single-walled carbon nanotubes for clinically accurate detection of femtomolar AD biomarkers in human plasma samples.

    • Kayoung Kim
    • , Min-Ji Kim
    •  & Chan Beum Park

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Nanotechnology can bring significant advancements to hemostatic patches. Here, the authors design a superhydrophobic hemostatic surface with immobilized carbon nanofibers that can stop bleeding instantaneously upon application, seal the wound subsequently by promoting quick fibrin formation, and facilitate unforced and facile patch removal without tearing the wound.

    • Zhe Li
    • , Athanasios Milionis
    •  & Choon Hwai Yap

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Strong-field photoemission is the emission of electrons driven by a strong electric field of light. Here the authors demonstrate a highly non-linear strong-field photoemission, approaching the 40th power-law scaling, from carbon nanotubes, yielding a photoemission current with up to 100% carrier-envelope phase modulation depth.

    • Chi Li
    • , Ke Chen
    •  & Qing Dai

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Carbon nanotubes are considered promising materials for microelectronics, but it is challenging to separate semiconducting tubes from their metallic counterparts. Here, the authors report a self-purification growth process that allows them to obtain long, highly pure semiconducting carbon nanotubes.

    • Zhenxing Zhu
    • , Nan Wei
    •  & Fei Wei

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Molecular electrocatalysts reducing CO2 to CO with high selectivity and high rate are urgently needed. A cobalt phthalocyanine complex is capable of reducing CO2 to CO in water with a maximum partial current density up to 165 mA cm−2, matching the most active noble metal-based nanocatalysts.

    • Min Wang
    • , Kristian Torbensen
    •  & Marc Robert

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fullerenes are promising organic semiconducting materials for electronic applications, but of low conductivity due to limited intermolecular hybridization. Cui et al. show a black phosphorous substrate organizes C60 monolayers to form delocalized semiconducting band with tens times enhanced conductivity.

    • Xingxia Cui
    • , Ding Han
    •  & Min Feng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Bottom-up synthesis from rationally designed precursor molecules is one of the most promising routes to single-walled carbon nanotubes of any desired chirality. Here, the authors present a combinatorial approach to easily assemble a variety of these complex nanotube precursors from simple complementary segments.

    • Joerg Tomada
    • , Thomas Dienel
    •  & Konstantin Amsharov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Though single-walled carbon nanotubes should theoretically be extremely strong, it is unclear why their experimental tensile strengths are far lower and vary between nanotubes. Here, the authors directly measure the tensile strengths of individual structure-defined carbon nanotubes, revealing key insights into the relationship between their chemical structure and strength.

    • Akira Takakura
    • , Ko Beppu
    •  & Kenichiro Itami

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The tensile strength of a carbon nanotube fiber is predicted to increase as its constituent nanotubes become more perfectly and densely aligned. Here, the authors present an optimized direct-spinning and chlorosulfonic acid densification method to rapidly produce carbon nanotube fibers with excellent mechanical and electrical properties.

    • Jaegeun Lee
    • , Dong-Myeong Lee
    •  & Seung Min Kim

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Creating fluorescent defects in single-walled carbon nanotubes is a promising way to modify their optical properties, but defect generation is still difficult to control. Here, the authors report an efficient method to incorporate high-quality oxygen defects in carbon nanotubes using only hypochlorite and light.

    • Ching-Wei Lin
    • , Sergei M. Bachilo
    •  & Angela M. Belcher

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Chemical defects endow materials with unique properties but their investigation is challenging due to their small footprint. Here the authors develop a high throughput shortwave infrared spectroscopy method enabling spectral identification and quantitative counting of fluorescent chemical defects at the single defect level.

    • Xiaojian Wu
    • , Mijin Kim
    •  & YuHuang Wang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Monitoring growth dynamics of crystalline thin materials progressively is crucial to understand the mechanism. Here, the authors develop a local step flow model to investigate the growth of C60 films on graphene coated over silicon substrates that correlates the step-edge velocity with its terrace lengths using the X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy.

    • Randall L. Headrick
    • , Jeffrey G. Ulbrandt
    •  & Karl F. Ludwig Jr.

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Molecular switches that can access more than just a few states are difficult to realize. Here, the authors use scanning tunnelling microscopy and spectroscopy to show that a surface-bound Li@C60 endofullerene can be switched between 14 molecular states—distinguished by the location of the Li atom inside the fullerene cage—by resonant tunnelling through the superatom molecular orbitals.

    • Henry J. Chandler
    • , Minas Stefanou
    •  & Renald Schaub

  • Article
    | Open Access

    At nanoscale, it is synthetically very difficult to increase the structural complexity of hollow structures. Here, the authors use a stepwise liquid templating strategy to build, assemble, and interconnect fullerene hollow nanostructures, just like the synthetic freedom one could have with pottery.

    • Fei Han
    • , Ruoxu Wang
    •  & Hongyu Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Correlating the optoelectronic properties in organic semiconductors is vital to realizing devices with high performance and new functionalities. Here, the authors report the role of optically excited charge transfer excitons on energy level alignment of the transport levels in organic thin films.

    • Benjamin Stadtmüller
    • , Sebastian Emmerich
    •  & Stefan Mathias

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Dilanthanide complexes that possess radical bridges exhibit enhanced magnetic exchange coupling, affording molecular magnets with high blocking temperatures. Here, the authors explore a series of dilanthanide-encapsulated fullerenes where the radical bridge is taken to its limit and the role is played by a single unpaired electron.

    • Fupin Liu
    • , Georgios Velkos
    •  & Alexey A. Popov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The structures of fullerenes, or buckyballs, are often very difficult to resolve. Here, the authors describe a decapyrrylcorannulene host with ten flexible pyrryl groups that can efficiently co-crystallize with diverse fullerene derivatives in a ‘hand-ball-hand’ fashion, allowing crystallographic identification of commonly known types of fullerenes.

    • Yun-Yan Xu
    • , Han-Rui Tian
    •  & Lan-Sun Zheng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The development of electrically conductive fibres is attractive for wearable electronics, but performance should be maintained upon deformation and tensile strain. Here the authors fabricate flexible, stretchable, carbon nanotube-coated spandex fibres for supercapacitors and artificial muscles.

    • Wonkyeong Son
    • , Sungwoo Chun
    •  & Changsoon Choi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding the location and nature of the catalytic active site is critical for controlling a catalyst’s activity and selectivity. Here, the authors separate the metal from the support by a controlled distance while maintaining the ability to promote defects via the use of carbon nanotube hydrogen highways.

    • Nicholas M. Briggs
    • , Lawrence Barrett
    •  & Steven P. Crossley

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The weak and directional CH-π hydrogen bond has rarely been exploited in the design of supramolecular complexes and molecular machinery. Here, the authors construct a bowl-in-tube complex stabilized solely by concyclic CH-π hydrogen bonds, and show that the guest exhibits single-axis rotational motion despite tight association with the host.

    • Taisuke Matsuno
    • , Masahiro Fujita
    •  & Hiroyuki Isobe

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Quasicrystals possess long range order but no translational symmetry, and rotational symmetries that are forbidden in periodic crystals. Here, a fullerene overlayer deposited on a surface of an icosahedral intermetallic quasicrystal achieves a Fibonacci square grid structure, by selective adsorption at specific sites.

    • Sam Coates
    • , Joseph A. Smerdon
    •  & Hem Raj Sharma

  • Article
    | Open Access

    One-dimensional materials such as carbon nanotubes have many applications, but not all of their properties can be described in the same way as for conventional media. Here, the authors devise a method to measure the complex optical susceptibility in a 1D nanomaterial and demonstrate it for carbon nanotubes.

    • Fengrui Yao
    • , Can Liu
    •  & Kaihui Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The atomistic behaviour of nanocatalysts still remains largely unknown. Here, the authors reveal and explore reactions of nm-sized clusters of 14 technologically important metals in carbon nano test tubes using time-series imaging by atomically-resolved transmission electron microscopy.

    • Kecheng Cao
    • , Thilo Zoberbier
    •  & Andrei N. Khlobystov

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While endohedral metallofullerenes have demonstrated advantageous electronic and magnetic properties, the isolation of monomeric M@C60 remains highly challenging. Here, the authors prepare trifluoromethylated Gd@C60 and La@C60, where the functionalization of C60 allows for the stabilization of these otherwise reactive species.

    • Ayano Nakagawa
    • , Makiko Nishino
    •  & Hisanori Shinohara

  • Article
    | Open Access

    While metal–carbon double bonds are common in transition metal chemistry and catalysis, unsupported uranium–carbon double bonds remain highly challenging to prepare. Here, the authors stabilize and characterize a U=C=U cluster containing unusually short, unsupported double bonds inside an Ih(7)-C80 fullerene cage.

    • Xingxing Zhang
    • , Wanlu Li
    •  & Ning Chen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Doping carbon nanomaterials with heteroatoms is the most common way to change their catalytic activity. Here, the authors show that the catalytic properties of single-walled carbon nanotubes can be modified by non-covalently encapsulating them within electron-accepting or electron-donating macrocycles to form rotaxane-like structures.

    • Matías Blanco
    • , Belén Nieto-Ortega
    •  & Emilio M. Pérez

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Quantum confinement has enabled the development of modern optoelectronic devices, including the quantum cascade laser, based on the control of intersubband plasmons. Here, Yanagi et al. observe intersubband plasmons in gated and aligned carbon nanotubes with applications in carbon-based optoelectronics and fundamental physics.

    • Kazuhiro Yanagi
    • , Ryotaro Okada
    •  & Junichiro Kono

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Optomechanics has recently moved into the quantum regime. Here, Tavernarakis et al. demonstrate that a hybrid optomechanical device made up of a carbon nanotube with a metal nanoparticle at its tip can push force measurements towards the quantum regime at room temperature.

    • A. Tavernarakis
    • , A. Stavrinadis
    •  & P. Verlot

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Bundles of single-wall carbon nanotubes with enriched chirality can be used as model systems for exploring exciton physics in low-dimensional nanostructures. Here, the authors use resonant Raman spectroscopy to probe intertube interactions in bundles of (6,5)-enriched carbon nanotubes, and observe a Fano resonance arising from coupling between intertube and intratube excitons.

    • Jeffrey R. Simpson
    • , Oleksiy Roslyak
    •  & Stephen K. Doorn

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It has long been anticipated theoretically that semiconductors with small band gaps may form a correlated exciton insulator phase, but it has been difficult to find material realisations. Here, the authors predict numerically that zero-gap armchair carbon nanotubes could be exciton insulators.

    • Daniele Varsano
    • , Sandro Sorella
    •  & Massimo Rontani

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Single-walled carbon nanotubes offer exciting optoelectronic applications but generally suffer from low quantum yields. Here, Luo et al. demonstrate that coupling nanotubes to plasmonic antennas can lead to large Purcell enhancement and corresponding increase in quantum yield as well as plasmonic thermometry at the single molecule level.

    • Yue Luo
    • , Ehsaneh D. Ahmadi
    •  & Stefan Strauf

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Low-dimensional nanomaterials are crucial conducting components of stretchable electronics, but their mechanical reinforcement remains challenging. Here, the authors infiltrate carbon nanotubes into a porous ceramic network to produce a 3D nanofelted self-entangled assembly with high conductivity and mechanical stability.

    • Fabian Schütt
    • , Stefano Signetti
    •  & Rainer Adelung

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Carbon-based molecules could prove useful in terahertz and optical devices controlled by pure spin currents. Here, conversely, the authors use spin currents to probe molecular dynamics and enhance the optical response of a fullerene layer, enabling hybrid magneto-molecular optoelectronic devices.

    • May C. Wheeler
    • , Fatma Al Ma’Mari
    •  & Oscar Cespedes

  • Article
    | Open Access

    T-carbon is a previously predicted but so far unobserved allotrope of carbon, with a crystal structure similar to diamond, but with each atomic lattice position replaced by a carbon tetrahedron. Here, the authors produce T-carbon nanowires via laser-irradiating a suspension of carbon nanotubes in methanol.

    • Jinying Zhang
    • , Rui Wang
    •  & Chunming Niu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Spintronics, graphene, and carbon nanotubes are potential components of next-generation high performance computers. Here, the authors propose and theoretically evaluate a spintronic logic family composed solely of carbon materials with the potential for a 100 × improvement in energy efficiency.

    • Joseph S. Friedman
    • , Anuj Girdhar
    •  & Alan V Sahakian

  • Article
    | Open Access

    By utilizing electron-hole asymmetry in ultra-short single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) transistors, McRaeet al., develop ‘two-in-one’ SWCNT quantum devices that can switch from behaving as quantum-dot transistors for holes to quantum buses for electrons by changing the transistor’s gate voltage

    • A. C. McRae
    • , V. Tayari
    •  & A. R. Champagne

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