Dynamics of fragmentation and multiple vacancy generation in irradiated single-walled carbon nanotubes

TL;DR

This study investigates how Cs+ ion irradiation causes damage and vacancy formation in single-walled carbon nanotubes, revealing dominant cluster sputtering patterns and the effects of prior irradiation on damage extent.

Contribution

It provides detailed analysis of fragmentation patterns and vacancy generation in SWCNTs under ion irradiation, highlighting the prevalence of multiple vacancies and damage mechanisms.

Findings

C2 is the most dominant sputtered species in pristine SWCNTs.

Multiple vacancies (double, triple, quadruple) are generated by ion irradiation.

Heavily irradiated SWCNTs also sputter from inter-nanotube structures.

Abstract

The results from mass spectrometry of clusters sputtered from Cs+ irradiated single-walled carbon nano-tubes (SWCNTs) as a function of energy and dose identify the nature of the resulting damage in the form of multiple vacancy generation. For pristine SWCNTs at all Cs+ energies, C2 is the most dominant species, followed by C3, C4 and C1. The experiments were performed in three stages: in the first stage, Cs+ energy E(Cs+) was varied. During the second stage, the nanotubes were irradiated continuously at E(Cs+) = 5 keV for 1,800 s. Afterwards, the entire sequence of irradiation energies was repeated to differentiate between the fragmentation patterns of the pristine and of heavily irradiated SWCNTs. The sputtering and normalized yields identify the quantitative and relative extent of the ion-induced damage by creating double, triple and quadruple vacancies; the single vacancies are least favored. Sputtering from the heavily irradiated SWCNTs occurs not only from the damaged and fragmented nanotubes, but also from the inter-nanotube structures that are grown due to the accumulation of the sputtered clusters. Similar irradiation experiments were performed with the multi-walled carbon nanotubes; the results confirmed the dominant C2 followed by C3, C4 and C1.