Rainbow channeling of protons in very short carbon nanotubes with aligned Stone–Wales defects

Abstract

In this paper proton channeling through armchair single-walled-carbon-nanotubes (SWCNTs) with aligned Stone–Wales defects has been investigated. The energy of the proton beam was 1GeV, while the lengths of the SWCNTs have been varied from 200nm up to 1000nm. The linear density of aligned defects has been varied in the whole range, from minimally up to maximally possible values. Here are presented results of a detailed morphological analysis concerning: the formation, evolution and interaction of the nanotube rainbows.The potential of the SWCNT has been constructed from Molère’s expression of the Thomas–Fermi’s proton–carbon interaction-energy, using the approximation of the continuous atomic string. Trajectories of the channeled protons were obtained by solving the corresponding classical equations of motions. Distributions of the transmitted protons were obtained by the Monte-Carlo simulation. The shape of angular distributions has been explained in the framework of the theory of nanotube rainbows. The aim of this study is also to investigate the applicability of the proton rainbow channeling for the characterization of nanotubes with aligned Stone–Wales defects.