Electron Irradiation Effects in Carbon Nanostructures: Surface Reconstruction, Extreme Compression, Nanotube Growth and Morphology Manipulation

It will be demonstrated, that irradiation exposure at elevated temperatures, can be used as an effective tool to covalently weld SWNTs in order to create molecular junctions of various geometries [1–3]. We have fabricated Y, X and T-like junctions that are stable [2]. Tight binding molecular dynamics calculations demonstrate that vacancies, formed under the electron beam, trigger the formation of molecular junctions involving seven or eight membered carbon rings. We envisage that these results will pave the way towards controlled fabrication of novel nanotube-based molecular circuits, nanotube fabrics and network architectures. In this context, novel super architectures, using carbon nanotu…