Determination of optical isomers for left-handed or right-handed chiral double-wall carbon nanotubes.
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.
Liu
Zheng
Z
Research Center for Advanced Carbon Materials, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Tsukuba 305-8565, Japan.
Suenaga
Kazu
K
Yoshida
Hiromichi
H
Sugai
Toshiki
T
Shinohara
Hisanori
H
Iijima
Sumio
S