Incommensurate double-walled carbon nanotubes as one-dimensional moiré crystals

Abstract

Cylindrical multishell structure is one of the prevalent atomic arrangements\nin nanowires. Being multishell, the well-defined atomic periodicity is hardly\nrealized in it because the periodic units of individual shells therein\ngenerally do not match except for very few cases, posing a challenge to\nunderstand its physical properties. Here we show that moir\\'e patterns\ngenerated by superimposing atomic lattices of individual shells are decisive in\ndetermining its electronic structures. Double- walled carbon nanotubes, as an\nexample, are shown to have spectacular variations in their electronic\nproperties from metallic to semiconducting and further to insulating states\ndepending on their moir\\'e patterns, even when they are composed of only\nsemiconducting nanotubes with almost similar energy gaps and diameters. Thus,\naperiodic multishell nanowires can be classified into new one-dimensional\nmoir\\'e crystals with distinct electronic structures.\n