Simulations of nucleation of single-walled carbon nanotubes

Abstract

A common nucleation and growth mechanism of single-walled carbon nanotubes based on a vapourliquid-solid model has been proposed according to molecular dynamics simulations and related experiments. This mechanism can explain many important experimental observations such as similarities between samples synthesized using different techniques, minimum and maximum radii of single-walled carbon nanotubes and the fact that single-walled carbon nanotubes can only grow within a certain temperature interval. © 2007 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.