Quantum Mechanical Characterization of Single Walled Carbon Nanotube (SWCNT) to Evaluate Stability and Conductivity

Single Walled Carbon Nanotube (SWCNT) is known to have unique thermodynamic and electrical properties which mainly depends upon the chiral index values (n, m). Quantum mechanical modeling and simulation studies were conducted for these samples to characterize the above properties. The energy gap of conducting carbon nano tubes has been found to be negligibly small. Armchair configuration with (n=m) is found to be highly stable. All these samples are found to be conducting. Structures with n and m values (8,7), (7,8), (7,6), (7,2), (6,5), (5,3) (4,5) and (3,5) are found to be unstable and are all semiconductors.