Environmental damping and vibrational coupling of confined fluids within isolated carbon nanotubes

Yu-Ming Tu; Matthias Kuehne; Rahul Prasanna Misra; Cody L Ritt; Hananeh Oliaei; Samuel Faucher; Haokun Li; Xintong Xu; Aubrey Penn; Sungyun Yang; Jing Fan Yang; Kyle Sendgikoski; Joshika Chakraverty; John Cumings; Arun Majumdar; Narayana R Aluru; Jordan A Hachtel; Daniel Blankschtein; Michael S Strano

doi:10.1038/s41467-024-49661-8

Environmental damping and vibrational coupling of confined fluids within isolated carbon nanotubes

Nat Commun. 2024 Jul 3;15(1):5605. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-49661-8.

Authors

Yu-Ming Tu^#¹, Matthias Kuehne^#^{1

2}, Rahul Prasanna Misra¹, Cody L Ritt¹, Hananeh Oliaei³, Samuel Faucher¹, Haokun Li⁴, Xintong Xu⁴, Aubrey Penn⁵, Sungyun Yang¹, Jing Fan Yang¹, Kyle Sendgikoski⁶, Joshika Chakraverty¹, John Cumings⁷, Arun Majumdar^{4

8}, Narayana R Aluru⁹, Jordan A Hachtel¹⁰, Daniel Blankschtein¹, Michael S Strano¹¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
² Department of Physics, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA.
³ Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA.
⁴ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
⁵ MIT.nano, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁶ Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
⁷ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
⁸ Stanford Precourt Institute for Energy, Stanford, CA, USA.
⁹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
¹⁰ Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA.
¹¹ Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA. [email protected].

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Because of their large surface areas, nanotubes and nanowires demonstrate exquisite mechanical coupling to their surroundings, promising advanced sensors and nanomechanical devices. However, this environmental sensitivity has resulted in several ambiguous observations of vibrational coupling across various experiments. Herein, we demonstrate a temperature-dependent Radial Breathing Mode (RBM) frequency in free-standing, electron-diffraction-assigned Double-Walled Carbon Nanotubes (DWNTs) that shows an unexpected and thermally reversible frequency downshift of 10 to 15%, for systems isolated in vacuum. An analysis based on a harmonic oscillator model assigns the distinctive frequency cusp, produced over 93 scans of 3 distinct DWNTs, along with the hyperbolic trajectory, to a reversible increase in damping from graphitic ribbons on the exterior surface. Strain-dependent coupling from self-tensioned, suspended DWNTs maintains the ratio of spring-to-damping frequencies, producing a stable saturation of RBM in the low-tension limit. In contrast, when the interior of DWNTs is subjected to a water-filling process, the RBM thermal trajectory is altered to that of a Langmuir isobar and elliptical trajectories, allowing measurement of the enthalpy of confined fluid phase change. These mechanisms and quantitative theory provide new insights into the environmental coupling of nanomechanical systems and the implications for devices and nanofluidic conduits.

Grants and funding

DE-SC0019112/DOE | Office of Science (SC)