Naming Nanotubes
You can imagine carbon nanotubes as being formed by rolling up graphene sheets.
How the edges of the sheets are matched can give nanotubes with different properties. Armchair nanotubes are metallic. Zig-zag and chiral nanotubes can be either metallic or semiconducting.
The nanotube type is determined by how many times you have to move in the a1 direction (n) and how many times you have to move in the a2 direction (m) in order to return to your starting point. Nanotubes are named as (n,m), where n and m are called the chiral numbers. Zig-zag tubes are (n,0), armchair tubes are (n,n), and chiral tubes are (n,m), where n≠m.
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Developed in collaboration with the
University of Wisconsin Materials Research Science and Engineering Center Interdisciplinary Education Group | MRSEC on Nanostructured Interfaces This page created by George Lisensky, Beloit College.
Last modified
April 25, 2015
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