title: Determination of optical isomers for left-handed or right-handed chiral double-wall carbon nanotubes.
abstract: The handedness relationship between adjacent layers in nested double-wall carbon nanotubes (DWNTs) has been investigated for the first time. Our high-resolution electron microscopy analysis on a series of specimen tilts can successfully tell the handedness of each constituent nanotube in a DWNT, and therefore the chiral indices (n, m) including their optical isomers [(n, m) or (m, n)] of inner and outer nanotubes can be uniquely determined. It is shown that right-handed and left-handed nanotubes are equally distributed for both the inner and outer nanotubes in the examined specimens and a preferable handedness relationship between the adjacent layers in DWNT may exist.
authors.affiliation: Research Center for Advanced Carbon Materials, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tsukuba 305-8565, Japan.
authors.forename: Zheng
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Kazu
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Suenaga
authors.forename: Hiromichi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yoshida
authors.forename: Toshiki
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sugai
authors.forename: Hisanori
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Shinohara
authors.forename: Sumio
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Iijima