title: How evaporating carbon nanotubes retain their perfection?
abstract: We present a mechanism of high-temperature sublimation of carbon nanotubes that does not destroy their ordered makeup even upon significant loss of mass. The atoms depart to the gas phase from the pentagon-heptagon dislocation cores, while the bond disruption is immediately repaired, and the 5|7 seamlessly propagate through the lattice. This explains a broad class of unsettled phenomena when at high temperature or under radiation the nanotubes do not become amorphous but rather shrink in size nearly flawlessly.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, USA.
authors.forename: Feng
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Ding
authors.forename: Kun
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Jiao
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Boris I
authors.initials: BI
authors.lastname: Yakobson