Nanomechanical imaging of multi-walled carbon nanotubes

Nanomechanical mapping of individual multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) has been undertaken to investigate intra-tube variations of mechanical response. Ultrasonic force microscopy has been used to measure the relative axial and radial variations of contact stiffness of individual MWNTs synthesized using chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and arc-discharge (AD) techniques. For CVD-based MWNTs the contact stiffness of the tube was seen to vary strongly across volume defects (axial variation of the tube radius) and is assumed to result from the high crystalline defect density associated with such radial variations. These observations support recent experimental data of effective Young's modulus inferred from electrostatically-induced nanotube vibration amplitudes.