A detailed Raman study on thin single-wall carbon nanotubes prepared by the HiPCO process

Abstract

The Raman spectrum of single wall carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) prepared by high pressure CO decomposition (HiPCO process) has been recorded at nine excitation laser energies ranging from 1.83 eV to 2.71 eV. The characteristic nanotubes features: G band, D band and radial breathing mode (RBM) have been analyzed and compared to those of an arc discharge SWNT material of similar diameter. A strong Breit-Wigner-Fano type (metallic) contribution to the G band was found in the spectra measured with green lasers, while spectra measured with red lasers indicate resonances of semiconducting SWNTs. Analysis of the energy dependence of the position of the D band revealed sinusoid oscillations superimposed on a linear trend. The validity of full DOS calculations for HiPCO materials has been confirmed by a match found between the estimated spectral contribution of metallic SWNTs as calculated from the components of the measured G band and as predicted by the (n, m) indexes of the major scatterers of DOS simulations. The RBM region of the HiPCO spectrum is more complex than usually observed for SWNTs. The analysis performed with a Gaussian distribution and improved fitting parameters leads to a mean diameter and variance of 1.05 nm and 0.15 nm, respectively. A bimodal Gaussian distribution had little influence on the error sum but reduced the standard error slightly. The major spectral features of the RBM could be interpreted using available resonance Raman theory.