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Extreme Nanowires and Single Atom Coils of Metallic Tellurium Formed Within Ultra-Narrow Carbon Nanotubes

Modelling of Peierls distortion and Total Energy Shifts for a Te atomic chain inside a (5,5) conformation Single Walled Carbon Nanotube

We have reported the observation and modeling of extreme Te nanowires encapsulated inside UNSWCNTs with diameters between 0.7 and 1.1 nm. Using state-of-the-art AC-TEM and AC-STEM methods, associated with a high-throughput, 1D-adapted implementation of the ab initio random structure searching (AIRSS) method we have imaged and interpreted encapsulated Extreme nanowires consisting of both linear chains and single atom coils of metallic tellirium. Extreme Nanowires represent the ultimate class of crystals: they are literally the smallest periodic materials possible with one to two atom-wide motifs repeating in one dimension (1D) only. As such they offer a privileged perspective into the physics and chemistry of highly low-dimensional systems as well as giving a first look at the Phase Change characteritics of these systems at the lowest conceivable dimension.

This work is published in "Single-Atom scale structural selectivity in Te nanowires encapsulated inisde ultra-narrow single-walled carbon nanotubes" P. V. C. Medeiros, S. R. Marks, J. M. Wynn, A. Vasylenko, Q. Ramasse, D. Quigley, J. Sloan, A. J. Morris, ACS Nano, ASAP (2017). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.7b02225 and is also featured in the following Press Release by Cambridge University: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/scientists-construct-a-stable-one-dimensional-metallic-material.