Disordered Hyperuniform Quasi-1D Materials

TL;DR

This paper extends the concept of disorder hyperuniformity to quasi-one-dimensional materials, specifically amorphous carbon nanotubes with defects, revealing suppressed density fluctuations and potential for novel physical properties.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized framework for hyperuniformity in quasi-1D systems and applies it to amorphous carbon nanotubes, demonstrating their hyperuniform nature and stability.

Findings

Amorphous nanotubes are hyperuniform regardless of structural parameters.

Amorphous nanotubes are more energetically stable than those with periodic defects.

Defect introduction can induce metallic behavior in semiconducting nanotubes.

Abstract

Carbon nanotubes are quasi-one-dimensional systems that possess superior transport, mechanical, optical, and chemical properties. In this work, we generalize the notion of disorder hyperuniformity, a recently discovered exotic state of matter with hidden long-range order, to quasi-one-dimensional materials. As a proof of concept, we then apply the generalized framework to quantify the density fluctuations in amorphous carbon nanotubes containing randomly distributed Stone-Wales defects. We demonstrate that all of these amorphous nanotubes are hyperuniform, i.e., the infinite-wavelength density fluctuations of these systems are completely suppressed, regardless of the diameter, rolling axis, number of rolling sheets, and defect fraction of the nanotubes. We find that these amorphous nanotubes are energetically more stable than nanotubes with periodically distributed Stone-Wales defects. Moreover, certain semiconducting defect-free carbon nanotubes become metallic as sufficiently large amounts of defects are randomly introduced. This structural study of amorphous nanotubes strengthens our fundamental understanding of these systems, and suggests possible exotic physical properties, as endowed by their disordered hyperuniformity. Our findings also shed light on the effect of dimensionality reduction on the hyperuniformity property of materials.