164y Temperature Profile in the Oscillatory Behavior of Double-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

Edna S. Lopez-Saucedo1, Jose L. Rivera2, and Francis W. Starr2. (1) Chemical Engineering Department, Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolas de Hidalgo, Santiago Tapia No. 403, Col. Centro, Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico, (2) Physics Department, Wesleyan University, 265 Church St., Middletown, CT 06459

Double-walled carbon nanotubes (DWCN) undergo oscillatory behavior in the separation of their centers of mass after an external axial force is applied to separate and telescope them [1-4]. The external axial force can be thought as a mechanical impulse applied for short periods in the scale of picoseconds. In this work we performed molecular dynamics simulations at constant energy with several time-dependent functional forms of the initial impulse. Nanotubes were modeled as carbon sites with inter- and intra-molecular interactions. The studied system is the DWCN with chiral conformations (7,0) / (9,9). When the external axial force is applied, strong friction processes produced a pronounced increase in the average temperature of the system, which depends on the functional form of the applied impulse. After the external axial force is eliminated, the system shows a monotonically increase in its average temperature due to the friction forces during the oscillatory behavior. We will show the dependence in the increase of temperature as a function of the functional form of the applied impulse.

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