Abstract Submitted to the    NANOTUBE'04 Conference:

Characteristics of carbon nanotubes, such as electrical and thermal properties, can be possible to modulate by filling their internal spaces with fullerenes and other elements. These structures are called “Peapod” [1]. We succeeded in making peapod structures with position controlled vertically aligned multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs), grown on a substrate using hot filament chemical vapor deposition. Opening the tips of the MWNTs was performed at 870 K using oxygen and C60 molecules were then deposited on them to fill their inner spaces. We confirmed that the MWNTs were open at the tips and filled with C60 molecules using transmission electron microscopy. To investigate the modulation in electrical properties caused by C60 molecules, we performed two-terminal current-voltage DC measurements of the peapod structures and the original MWNTs. We found that the electric resistance of the peapod structures was about 30% lower than the original MWNTs. In our presentation, we will discuss a possible mechanism of the modulation in electrical properties.

The authors thank Dr. N. Yokoyama of Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. and Prof. T. Mizutani of Nagoya University for their support and useful suggestions. This work was partly performed through the support of Special Coordination Funds of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of the Japanese Government.

[1] Smith, B. W. et al. (1998), Nature 396: 323-4.