Carbon peapod

C60 fullerene impurities are formed during the annealing treatment and acid purification, and enter the nanotubes through defects or vapor-phase diffusion.

Varying elements can be incorporated into a carbon peapod through doping and will dramatically affect the resulting thermal and electrical conductivity properties.

[4] Owing to the ease with which fullerenes can encapsulate or be doped with other molecules and the transparency of nanotubes to electron beams, carbon peapods can also serve as nano-scale test tubes.

After fullerenes containing reactants diffuse into an SWNT, a high-energy electron beam can be used to induce high reactivity, thus triggering formation of C60 dimers and merging of their contents.

[12][13] Additionally, due to the enclosed fullerenes being limited to only a one-dimensional degree of mobility, phenomena such as diffusion or phase transformations can easily be studied.

Various combinations of fullerene C60 sizes and nanotube structures can lead to various electric conductivity property of carbon peapods due to orientation of rotations.

Although both the doped fullerides and ropes of SWNTs are superconductors, unfortunately, the critical temperatures for the superconducting phase transition in these materials are low.