Fig. 4: Mechanism of coalescence with chiral-angle dependence.
From: Coalescence of carbon nanotubes while preserving the chiral angles
Schematic of the sequential bond cleavage and recombination (SBCR) mechanism from the side (a) and the bottom (b). C-C bonds highlighted in red and blue are those that break and recombine. In particular, the red and blue highlighted in (b) will now break and recombine (broken lines). Schematics of the three-dimensional arrangement of the zigzag direction of two (10,0) nanotubes (c), two (6,5) nanotubes (d), and enantiomers of (6,5) and (5,6) nanotubes (e) contributing to cleavage and recombination for the coalescence (red and blue lines in each left panel). Each photograph on the right shows a coalescence reaction in progress demonstrated using a molecular structure model kit (MOL-TALOU®). f Energy difference ΔE of partially coalesced nanotubes relative to that of the initial two nanotubes normalized by the number of carbon atoms NC in the calculation, plotted as a function of the number of cleaved and newly formed bonds along the zigzag direction, as calculated using molecular mechanics simulations. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
