Manipulation of individual double-walled carbon nanotubes packed in a casing shell

Controlled placement of carbon nanotubes is important for carbon-based nanodevice assembly. However, it is difficult to manipulate individual nanotubes because of their extremely small dimensions. Ultra-fine tubes are often in the form of bundles and are hard to efficiently move on a surface due to the strong adhesion among themselves and between the tubes and the substrate. This paper presents a novel manipulation approach of individual double-walled carbon nanotubes encased in a thick amorphous carbon shell. With an atomic force microscope, we are able to freely displace the nanotubes within a casing shell, and unpack it from the shell on a silicon surface. The theoretical analysis demonstrates that the unpacking process is determined by the difference of the static friction between the shell and the substrate and the resistance force between the shell and the embedded nanotube.