Carbon peapod

Generation of fullerene molecules inside a carbon nanotube (CNT) – in situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM) observation.[1]
TEM images of M3N@C80 peapods. Metal atoms (M = Ho or Sc) are seen as dark spots inside the fullerene molecules; they are doubly encapsulated in the C80 molecules and in the nanotubes.[2]
TEM image of a wide double-wall CNT densely filled with C60 fullerenes.[3]

Carbon peapod is a hybrid nanomaterial consisting of spheroidal fullerenes encapsulated within a carbon nanotube. It is named due to their resemblance to the seedpod of the pea plant. Since the properties of carbon peapods differ from those of nanotubes and fullerenes, the carbon peapod can be recognized as a new type of a self-assembled graphitic structure.[4] Possible applications of nano-peapods include nanoscale lasers, single electron transistors, spin-qubit arrays for quantum computing, nanopipettes, and data storage devices thanks to the memory effects and superconductivity of nano-peapods.[5][6]

  1. ^ Gorantla, Sandeep; Börrnert, Felix; Bachmatiuk, Alicja; Dimitrakopoulou, Maria; Schönfelder, Ronny; Schäffel, Franziska; Thomas, Jürgen; Gemming, Thomas; Borowiak-Palen, Ewa; Warner, Jamie H.; Yakobson, Boris I.; Eckert, Jürgen; Büchner, Bernd; Rümmeli, Mark H. (2010). "In situ observations of fullerene fusion and ejection in carbon nanotubes". Nanoscale. 2 (10): 2077–9. Bibcode:2010Nanos...2.2077G. doi:10.1039/C0NR00426J. PMID 20714658.
  2. ^ Gimenez-Lopez, Maria del Carmen; Chuvilin, Andrey; Kaiser, Ute; Khlobystov, Andrei N. (2011). "Functionalised endohedral fullerenes in single-walled carbon nanotubes". Chem. Commun. 47 (7): 2116–2118. doi:10.1039/C0CC02929G. hdl:10347/32317. PMID 21183975.
  3. ^ Barzegar, Hamid Reza; Gracia-Espino, Eduardo; Yan, Aiming; Ojeda-Aristizabal, Claudia; Dunn, Gabriel; Wågberg, Thomas; Zettl, Alex (2015). "C60/Collapsed Carbon Nanotube Hybrids: A Variant of Peapods". Nano Letters. 15 (2): 829–34. Bibcode:2015NanoL..15..829B. doi:10.1021/nl503388f. PMID 25557832.
  4. ^ Iijima, Sumio (2002). "Carbon nanotubes: Past, present, and future". Physica B: Condensed Matter. 323 (1–4): 1–5. Bibcode:2002PhyB..323....1I. doi:10.1016/S0921-4526(02)00869-4.
  5. ^ Kwon, Young-Kyun; Tománek, David; Iijima, Sumio (1999). ""Bucky Shuttle" Memory Device: Synthetic Approach and Molecular Dynamics Simulations". Physical Review Letters. 82 (7): 1470–1473. Bibcode:1999PhRvL..82.1470K. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.82.1470.
  6. ^ Utko, Pawel; Nygård, Jesper; Monthioux, Marc; Noé, Laure (2006). "Sub-Kelvin transport spectroscopy of fullerene peapod quantum dots". Applied Physics Letters. 89 (23): 233118. Bibcode:2006ApPhL..89w3118U. doi:10.1063/1.2403909. S2CID 120800423.