Thermally Induced Local Failures in Quasi-One-Dimensional Systems: Collapse in Carbon Nanotubes, Necking in Nanowires and Opening of Bubbles in DNA

摘要

We present a general framework to explore thermally activated failures inquasi one dimensional systems. We apply it to the collapse of carbon nanotubes,the formation of bottlenecks in nanowires, both of which limit conductance, andthe opening of local regions or "bubbles" of base pairs in strands of DNA thatare relevant for transcription and danaturation. We predict an exponentialbehavior for the probability of the opening of bubbles in DNA, the averagedistance between flattened regions of a nanotube or necking in a nanowire as amonotonically decreasing function of temperature, and compute a temperaturebelow which these events become extremely rare. These findings are difficult toobtain numerically, however, they could be accessible experimentally.