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Updated: Jul 16, 2026

Fabrication, Densification, and Replica Molding of 3D Carbon Nanotube Microstructures
Published on: July 2, 2012
How evaporating carbon nanotubes retain their perfection?
1Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, USA.
Abstract:
We present a mechanism of high-temperature sublimation of carbon nanotubes that does not destroy their ordered makeup even upon significant loss of mass. The atoms depart to the gas phase from the pentagon-heptagon dislocation cores, while the bond disruption is immediately repaired, and the 5|7 seamlessly propagate through the lattice. This explains a broad class of unsettled phenomena when at high temperature or under radiation the nanotubes do not become amorphous but rather shrink in size nearly flawlessly.

