Electron diffraction study of small bundles of single-wall carbon nanotubes with unique helicity - art. no. 125425

The selected-area electron diffraction technique has been used to investiga te the structure of bundles of single-wall carbon nanotubes synthesized by the catalytic chemical vapor deposition method. The helicity and lattice pa cking of the single-wall carbon nanotubes within the bundles have been dedu ced from the experimental diffraction patterns on the basis of the geometry of the reciprocal space of carbon nanotubes and computer simulations based on the kinematical theory. We show that a precise helicity can be found wi thin a given small bundle. We attribute this selectivity to the small numbe r of nanotubes (20-30) in the bundles.