Scanning tunneling microscope evidence of smallest rod presence in nanofilament carbon structure
Chernozatonskii L A. , Fedorov E. A., Kosakovskaya Z. Ja. , Panov V. I. , Savinov S. V.
The discovery of helical structure graphite microtubes and extensive study of remarkable molecules and fullerenes with increasing number of carbon atoms turned the attention of scientists to the search for carbon tubes of nanometer dimensions. Here we report the first observation with a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) of carbon rods of the smallest diameter (0.8 nm) in nanofilament films synthesized by vacuum electron beam graphite evaporation. These carbon rods are assumed to be tubelenes C36+12„ (containing six carbon hexagons in a belt) with a molecular diameter of 8 A.