Single-walled carbon nanotubes as a template for coronene stack formation

Single-walled carbon nanotubes can serve as a template for formation of various structures inside. Depending on conditions, the nanotube filling with coronene molecules may lead to creation of coronene stacks, graphene nanoribbons, or inner tubes. In this work, the formation of coronene stacks inside single-walled carbon nanotubes was studied using photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. We demonstrate the difference in the excitation PL maps between the spectral features of coronene stacks inside the nanotubes and products formed outside the nanotube interior. The optical investigation was supported by calculations of adsorption energy of coronene molecules inside and outside nanotubes. The theoretical calculations predict the most energetically favorable configurations of coronenemolecules with respect to the diameter of the outer nanotubes. Orientation of coronene stacks depends on the nanotube diameter. [GRAPHICS] Models of ten coronene molecules placed inside (10,10) and (11,11) nanotubes (upper and lower image part, respectively). (C) 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim