Coalescence of carbon nanotubes while preserving the chiral angles

Akira Takakura; Taishi Nishihara; Koji Harano; Ovidiu Cretu; Takeshi Tanaka; Hiromichi Kataura; Yuhei Miyauchi

doi:10.1038/s41467-025-56389-6

Article Coalescence of carbon nanotubes while preserving the chiral angles

Akira Takakura ; Taishi Nishihara ; Koji Harano ; Ovidiu Cretu ; Takeshi Tanaka ; Hiromichi Kataura ; Yuhei Miyauchi

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Akira Takakura, Taishi Nishihara, Koji Harano, Ovidiu Cretu, Takeshi Tanaka, Hiromichi Kataura, Yuhei Miyauchi. Coalescence of carbon nanotubes while preserving the chiral angles. Nature Communications. 2025, 16 (1), 1093. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-56389-6

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Atomically precise coalescence of graphitic nanocarbon molecules is one of the most challenging reactions in sp2 carbon chemistry. Here, we demonstrate that two carbon nanotubes with the same chiral indices (n, m) are efficiently coalesced into a single (2n, 2m) nanotube with preserved chiral angles via heat treatment at less than 1000°C. The (2n, 2m) nanotubes constituted up to ~20%–40% of the final sample in the most efficient case. New optical absorption peaks of the (2n, 2m) nanotubes emerged, indicating that the reaction occurred over the entire sample. The reaction efficiency strongly depended on the chiral angle, implying that C–C bond cleavage and recombination occurred sequentially. Furthermore, we found that the reaction occurs efficiently even at 600°C in an atmosphere containing trace amounts of oxygen. These findings offer new routes for the structure-selective synthesis of large-diameter nanotubes and drastic modification of the properties of nanotube assemblies via postprocessing.

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