Intercalation into carbon nanotubes

摘要

Since the recent discovery of carbon nanotubes the idea of doping them with electron acceptor or electron donor agents has been very attractive. The reason is that this kind of doping (by intercalation of donor or acceptor species in the spaces between carbon shells) could allow the control of the electronic properties of nanotubes in the same way as this is accomplished in graphite intercalation compounds. No results have yet been reported however on intercalation into nanotubes without their disintegration. "Buckybundle" material was used in this work. The buckybundles were produced by one of the authors by arc discharge technique. The material consists of multiwall nanotubes with outer diameter of several tens of nanometers. The nanotubes are close-packed into bundles. The bundles in turn form bigger fibre-like structures. Individual fibres of up to 3 mm long and 0.1 mm thick may be isolated. The defectlessness of the tubes was preliminarily confirmed by TEM.