Study of Structural Characterization of Single Carbon Nanotubes by Rayleigh Scattering (CAT#: STEM-ST-0003-YJL)

Introduction

Carbon nanotubes, the prototypical one-dimensional material, are generally chiral except for zigzag and armchair nanotubes. Two nanotube enantiomers, left- and right-handed, can show different interactions with circularly polarized light. From a fundamental point of view, when excited by an external field E, both the electric moment μ and the magnetic moment m exist in chiral nanotubes. Since the orientation of m (determined by the sign of G2) varies with the nanotube handedness, in principle, it is possible to identify the nanotube handedness through circular dichroic spectroscopic techniques.