Lattice fringe signatures of epitaxy on nanotubes

TL;DR

This paper investigates how electron microscopy fringe patterns reveal the epitaxial growth and chirality of metal lattices on carbon nanotubes, aiding in understanding their structural relationships.

Contribution

It introduces a fringe visibility modeling approach to analyze lattice images, linking nanoparticle orientation and nanotube chirality.

Findings

Epitaxial FCC metal growth produces distinct (111)-fringe patterns.

Fringe analysis can determine nanotube chirality.

Modeling enhances interpretation of electron microscope images.

Abstract

Carbon nanotubes are of potential interest as heterogeneous catalysis supports, in part because they offer a high surface area hexagonal array of carbon atoms for columnar or epitaxial attachment. Fringe visibility modeling of electron microscope lattice images allows one to investigate the relationship between individual nanoparticles and such nanotube supports. We show specifically how (111) columnar or epitaxial growth of FCC metal lattices, on carbon nanotubes viewed side-on, results in well-defined patterns of (111)-fringe orientations with respect to the tube axis. In the epitaxial case, the observations also provide information on chirality of the nanotube's outermost graphene sheet.