Abstract
A method was proposed to manipulate nanoparticles through a thermal gradient. The motion of a fullerene molecule enclosed inside a (10, 10) carbon nanotube with a thermal gradient was studied by molecular dynamics simulations. We created a one-dimensional potential valley by imposing a symmetrical thermal gradient inside the nanotube. When the temperature gradient was large enough, the fullerene sank into the valley and became trapped. The escaping velocities of the fullerene were evaluated based on the relationship between thermal gradient and thermophoretic force. We then introduced a new way to manipulate the position of nanoparticles by translating the position of thermostats with desirable thermal gradients. Compared to nanomanipulation using a scanning tunneling microscope or an atomic force microscope, our method for nanomanipulation has a great advantage by not requiring a direct contact between the probe and the object.
Highlights
Manipulation of atoms using a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) or an atomic force microscope (AFM) reveals the new era of nanotechnology or nanodesign [1]
The application of thermophoresis can be extended from the thermal driving of molecular linear motors to thermal restrain using potential valleys and to thermal nanomanipulation. This C60-Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) system was modeled with adaptive intermolecular reactive empirical bond order (AIREBO) potential [19], which deals with covalent carbon-carbon bonding interactions determined by the well-established REBO potential, while the nonbonded interaction between the carbon atoms of fullerene and those of CNT was described by the Lennard-Jones potential, as implemented in the LAMMPS package [20], which can be used to well describe the thermal properties of CNT [21], graphene [22], or graphene-nanotube 3D networks [23] or the mechanical properties of knitted graphene [24], with a time step 0.5 fs
The reason is that in the nonequilibrium system, the encapsulated C60 cluster suffers the thermophoretic force in the direction opposite to that of the thermal gradient, pointing from the hot region to the cold region
Summary
Manipulation of atoms using a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) or an atomic force microscope (AFM) reveals the new era of nanotechnology or nanodesign [1]. These approaches require a direct contact between the probe of STM/AFM and the object, which is of strong instrumental dependence and greatly restrains the manipulation. It is desirable to seek new methods to manipulate nanoparticles without contact. Thermophoresis has been used for the manipulation and stretching of DNA [4,5]. It is not until very recently that thermophoresis is found applicable on
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