Thermal relaxation kinetics of defects in single-wall carbon nanotubes

The defects in single-wall carbon nanotubes irradiated with a 248 nm pulsed excimer laser were studied using Raman spectroscopy. The thermal relaxation kinetics of the laser-induced defects was examined at sample temperatures from 296 to 698 K. Two relaxation processes are revealed; one is the fast process with an activation energy of 0.4 eV and the other is the slow process with an activation energy of 0.7 eV. These two processes can correspond to vacancy-interstitial recombination and vacancy migration along the tube axis, respectively.