Chemistry in the nanospace of carbon nanotubes.
Owing to the hollow structure of carbon nanotubes, they could be filled with various kinds of molecules, providing opportunities for studying the properties of molecules confined in nanospace. On the one hand, the spatial confinement imparts novel and distinct properties to the encapsulated species from their counterparts in bulk. On the other hand, the properties of the carbon nanotubes are modified as a result of the interaction between the carbon nanotubes and the encapsulated molecules. In this Focus Review, we summarize the recent advances in this field, including structure, phase transition, and chemical transformation of the encapsulated molecules as well as tuning of carbon nanotubes' properties, with special emphasis on the relation between these properties and the size of the confined space.
Wang
Zhiyong
Z
Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, State Key Lab of Rare Earth Materials Chemistry and Applications, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Shi
Zujin
Z
Gu
Zhennan
Z