The Role of Metal in Self‐Organization of Carbon into Graphite‐ or Diamond‐Like Nanotubes

Abstract

The reasons of the self‐organization of carbon‐metal systems into graphite‐ or diamond‐like nanotube were firstly discussed. Non‐transition metals, which do not form carbide, have highly disposed free levels and the metal phase formation does not allow energy relaxation over metal phase, which evolves as a result of recombining carbon‐carbon bonds. Therefore the energy is conserved as a metastable state such as diamond‐like nanotubes or films. Transition metals, which cannot form stable carbides, produce fullerene and graphite‐like nanotube structures because these metals produce relaxing the recombination energy of carbon atoms on forming the stable graphitic structures.

Keywords:

• Metals
• self‐organization
• nanotubes
• graphite‐like
• diamond‐like

Acknowledgments

This work was supported with ISTC project N2511, President RF Grant NSh‐1652.2003.3, project 2002–2006 years “Controlled synthesis of fullerenes and atomic clusters” and project CIC de UMSNH (Mexico).