Energy relaxation and pulsed neutrons diffraction studies of carbon nanotubes

Carbon nanotubes containing non-hexagonal rings have been computer generated and relaxed by minimization of the energy using the conjugate–gradient method. Then the powder diffraction patterns have been computed and converted to a real-space representation by the Fourier transform, yielding pair correlation functions which are compared with the pulsed neutrons experimental data for the single-wall carbon nanotubes produced by catalytic chemical vapour deposition. Effects of defective graphene cylinders on the interatomic distances and the resulting structures are discussed. The obtained results are also discussed in relation to previously reported paracrystalline behaviour of the nearest-neighbours distance fluctuations.