Carbon Nanotube Stiffness

Brownian bending fluctuations of two nanotubes with different diameters seen by near-infrared intrinsic fluorescence microscopy of semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) in water. The (7,5) SWCNT has a smaller diameter than (9,8) SWCNT and hence the bending fluctuations are more pronounced. Aggregation of SWCNTs into bundles strongly quenches the emission, so there is good discrimination against nanotube bundles.

Nikta Fakhri, Dmitri A. Tsyboulski, Laurent Cognet, R. Bruce Weisman and Matteo Pasquali, "Diameter-dependent bending dynamics of single-walled carbon nanotubes in liquids," PNAS, August 25, 2009, 106(34), 14219-14223.