Computational Studies of Metal Clusters and Carbon Nanotubes

Abstract

Carbon nanotubes constitute a promising candidate material in the realisation of nanoscaled electronics. This requires the ability for systematic production of carbon nanotubes with certain properties. This is called selective carbon nanotube growth. Two important aspects related to carbon nanotube growth are investigated in order to shed some light on this issue. First the melting behaviour of nanometer sized iron particles is investigated using molec- ular dynamics simulations. The iron nanoparticles studied are mounted on a porous Al2 O3 substrate in order to mimic the experimental situation during nanotube growth with the chemical vapour deposition method. This showed that the melting temperature of a cluster on a porous substrate may be lower than the melting temperature of a cluster on a flat sub- strate. This means that the catalyst particles used for nanotube growth may be liquid. In association with these studies the role of surface curvature to melting behaviour is explored further. The second presented study concerns the docking of nickel clusters to open single wall carbon nanotube ends. The motivation for this study was the possibility to continue growth of a carbon nanotube by docking of catalyst particles to its end. This work may also be of importance for the creation of electric junctions between carbon nanotubes and metal elec- trodes. This study showed that independent of whether the metal was gently put on the nanotube end or brutally forced to the end, it is the metal that adapts to the nanotube and not vice versa. For forced docking it was seen that carbon might dissolve in to the metal. This was not seen for the gently docked clusters. Carbon dissolution might affect the electronic properties of the metal (carbide) and nanotube-metal junction.