Longitudinal Solitons in Carbon Nanotubes

Abstract

We present the results on the soliton excitations in carbon nanotubes (CNT) using Brenner's many-body potential. Our numerical simulations demonstrate high soliton stability in (10,10) CNT. The interactions of solitons and solitary excitations with CNT defects are found to be inelastic if the excitations and defects length scales are comparable, resulting in a substantial part of soliton energy being distributed inhomogeneously over the defect bonds. In these solitary-cap collisions the local energy of few bonds in the cap can exceeds the average energy by an order of magnitude and more. This phenomenon denoted as "Tsunami effect" can contribute dynamically to the recently proposed "kinky chemistry". We also present results of changes in the local density of states and variations in the atomic partial charges estimated at different time instants of the solitary Tsunami at the nanotube cap.