Long-range interaction between Stone-Wales defects in zigzag single-walled carbon nanotubes

Abstract

Electronic properties of ($n$,0) single-walled carbon nanotubes with Stone-Wales (SW) defects are investigated by use of the tight-binding Green function method with real-space renormalization techniques. It is found that the interaction between two SW defects is long-range, with a characteristic length of several nanometers. The obtained characteristic length, reflecting the effective functional range of topologic defects, coincides with recent observations on defects in carbon nanotubes via scanning tunneling spectroscopy. By means of a monatomic chain model, the long-range interaction is revealed to be general in one-dimensional defected semiconducting systems, which can be equivallently described by a low-barrier quantum tunneling.