Organization of Polymers onto Carbon Nanotubes: A Route to Nanoscale Assembly

Atomic scale imaging using scanning tunneling microscopy has been used to investigate the morphology and structure of high molecular weight polymers attached to carbon nanotubes. A surprising degree of regularity is observed in the attached polymers, suggesting a “nanotube-driven” crystallization process is present. The symmetries of this crystalline state of the polymer are directly determined by the underlying nanotube's chirality. Tunneling spectroscopy further demonstrates that the crystallization of the polymer onto the nanotube results in modifications to the nanotube's electronic structure, as would be expected from a strong polymer−tube interaction. The assembly of nanoscale organics into objects with such perfect order clearly foreshadows the construction of large-scale nanoarchitectures with order over many lengths scales.