Growth of single-walled Ag and Cu nanotubes confined in carbon nanotubes, studied by molecular dynamics simulations

Y Han and R Li and Y Ge and JM Dong, JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS, 113, 234303 (2013).

DOI: 10.1063/1.4811368

Growth of single-walled silver and copper nanotubes (Ag- and Cu-SWNTs), confined in carbon nanotubes (CNTs), has been studied by using the classical molecular dynamics method. It is found that: (1) Four kinds of Ag-SWNTs, i.e., (3, 2), (4, 2), (4, 3), and (5, 3) ones, and five kinds of Cu-SWNTs, i.e., (3, 2), (4, 2), (4, 3), (4, 4), and (5, 3) ones, could be formed when the diameters of outside CNT containers are changed from 6.78 to 10.86 angstrom. (2) The formation of the Ag- and Cu-SWNTs in confined CNTs is less sensitive to the CNTs' tube indices, but heavily influenced by the CNTs' diameters. And the Ag- and Cu-SWNTs, formed in confined CNTs, are radially compressed, when the CNTs' diameters are small. (3) The frequencies of the radial breathing modes of Ag- and Cu-SWNTs are approximately to vary linearly with the inverse tube diameters. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.

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