Probing structural stability of double-walled carbon nanotubes at high non-hydrostatic pressure by Raman spectroscopy

Theoretical calculations predict that the collapse pressure for double-walled carbon nanotubes (DWCNTs) is proportional to 1/R³, where R is the effective or average radius of a DWCNT. In order to address the problem of CNT stability at high pressure and stress, we performed a resonance Raman study of DWCNTs dispersed in sodium cholate using 532 and 633nm laser excitation. Raman spectra of the recovered samples show minor versus irreversible changes with increasing I_D/I_G ratio after exposure to high non-hydrostatic pressure of 23 and 35GPa, respectively. The system exhibits nearly 70% pressure hysteresis in radial breathing vibrational mode signals recovery on pressure release which is twice that predicted by theory.