Vol.2, No.8, 902-910 (2010) Natural Science http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ns.2010.28111 Copyright © 2010 SciRes. OPEN ACCESS Molecular dynamics simulations of the interaction of carbon nanotube and a carbon disulfide solvent Kholmirzo Kholmurodov1,2*, Guzel Aru1, Kenji Yasuoka3 1Laboratory of Radiation Biology, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia; *Corresponding Author: mirzo@jinr.ru 2International University “Dubna”, Dubna, Russia 3Department of Mechanical Engineering, Keio University, Yokohama, Japan Received 4 February 2010; revised 18 March 2010; accepted 24 March 2010. ABSTRACT An analysis of the molecular dynamics (МD) of the interaction between a carbon nanotube (CNT) and a carbon disulfide active solvent (CS2) has been carried out. The aim of the present work is to estimate the dynamical and structural behavior of the CNT-CS2 system at different relative atomic concentrations and under tem- perature changes. The structural radial distri- bution functions and the dynamical configura- tions have been built for a CNT interacting with a CS2 solvent. A nontrivial observation for the CNT-CS2 system is that the solvent carbon disulfide atoms make up a patterned (layered) formation around the carbon nanotube. Keywords: Molecular Dynamics; Carbon Nanotube; Carbon Disulfide Solvent 1. INTRODUCTION Among the organic materials, carbon Nanotubes (CNTs) are unique for their electrical and chemical properties. They are very interesting in terms of material research and electronic applications. Depending on their chemical structure, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) can be used as an alternative to organic or inorganic semiconductors as well as conductors. The chemical bonding of nanotubes is composed entirely of sp2 bonds, similar to those of graphite. This bonding structure, which is stronger than the sp3 bonds found in diamonds, provides the molecules with their unique strength. Nanotubes naturally align themselves into "ropes" held together by van der Waals forces. The nature of the bonding of a nanotube is described by quantum chemistry―specifically, orbital hybridization. Solvents in which the CNTs can be solub- ilized include chlorobenzene, chloroform, methylene chloride, carbon disulfide, benzene, etc. The solubilities of the carbon nanotubes in these solvents range from about 0.01 to 5.0 mg/ml [1-4]. The aim of the present paper is to simulate the dynamical and structural properties of a CNT interacting with a carbon disulfide (CS2) solvent taking into account the Van der Waals forces only. For the CNT-CS2 system, we simulate different relative CNT solvent concentra- tions and temperature scales. In the description of the physical properties of the CNT, we employ the Tersoff potential [5]. It is a special case of a density-dependent potential, which reproduces the properties of the cova- lent bonding in systems containing carbon, silicon, ger- manium, etc, and alloys of these elements. A special feature of the potential is that it allows bond breaking and associated changes in bond hybridization. The ener- gy is modelled as a sum of pair-like interactions where, however, the coefficient of the attractive term in the pair- like potential (which plays the role of the bond order) depends on the local environment giving a many-body potential. The Tersoff potential has 11 atomic and 2 bi-atomic parameters (see, formulas 1-9): ()[ ()()] ijCijRijij Aij Ufrfrfr , (1) where the potential parameters have the following forms: ( )exp() ijijij ij rA ar , (2) ()exp( ) Aij ijijij rB br , (3) () Cij fr 11 cos[( )/( )] 22 ij ijij ij rR rR ,ij ijij RrS , (4) In (1) () ij rand () Aij r mean repulsive and attrac- tive, () Cij r―potential cutoff functions (() Cij fr () Cij fr 1 for ij ij rR and () Cij fr0 for ij ij rS). It is worth noting that the main feasure of the Tersoff potential is that the coefficients in (1) reflect many-body
K. Kholmurodov et al. / Natural Science 2 (2010) 902-910 Copyright © 2010 SciRes. OPEN ACCESS 903 nature of the interactions. The basic means of the coeffi- cients is that the strenth of each bond depends on the local environment and is lowered when the number of neighboors is relatively high. This dependence can ac- centuate or diminish the attractive force relative to the repulsive force, according to the environment, such that: 1/2 (1 ) iii ijiji ij L , (5) , ()( ) ijC ikikijk kij Lfrg , (6) 222 22 ()1//[(cos)] ijki iiiiijk gcdcdh , (7) ()/2 ijij aaa , ()/2 iji j bbb , (8) 1/2 () iji j AAA, 1/2 () iji j BBB, 1/2 () iji j AAA, 1/2 () iji j RRR, 1/2 (). iji j SSS (9) We have accepted the following values: 1 ii , ij ji , 1 ii , ij ji . The carbon disulfide (CS2) solvent has a com- paratively high solubility (~7.9 mg/ml). Several earlier papers considered interaction between the CS2 solvent and a fullerene (C60) solution [6-12]. The C60-CS2 system belongs to a class of solutions where a peak in the temperature dependence of solubility is observed (Tmax~280 K). The structural features of the fullerene in a solution, as well as the fullerene―solvent (C60–CS2) interaction mechanism have been investigated in detail in [6-12] by different methods (small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) and others). As was noted in [12], the characteristic size of the CS2 molecule (~0.3 nm) is comparable to that of the C60 fullerene (~ 1 nm); so, any interface organization of the CS2 molecules different from that in bulk must result in a significant difference between the interface and bulk molecular density of the solvent, and, hence, affect the visible size of the fullerene. 2. MATERIALS AND METHODS We performed the molecular dynamics (MD) simulation of several CNT-CS2 model systems. The MD simulation was based on the DL_POLY general-purpose code [13-15]. The MD cell is orthorhombic and square in the XY plane (30.7 × 30.7 × 41.7). The integration algorithm is an NPT Berendsen ‘ensemble’. The CNT (carbon nanotube) consists of 800 carbon atoms in a nanotube of 41.7 angstrom in length (see Figure 1). For the CNT, we used the Tersoff potential parameters of the DL_POLY software database [13-14]: = 1393.6, a= 3.4879, B = 346.74, b= 2.2119, R = 1.8, S = 2.1, = 1.5724 × 10-7, = 0.72751, c= 38049, d= 4.3484, h = –0.57058. The CS2 molecules were treated as rigid with the bond length of 1.55 angstrom between carbon and sulfide atoms (Figure 2). Throughout the computation, only the Lennard-Jones (LJ) interactions were taken into account. The number of the CS2 solvent molecules was varied, so we simulated CNT-solvent model systems of different relative atomic concentrations: x = 0.2, 0.4, …, 1.0 (Figure 3). The LJ potential was also used for the CNT― solvent interactions; the potential and parameteres are shown in Table 1, where C denotes the CNT carbon Figure 1. Structural presentations of the carbon nanotube (CNT) (top and bottom). Table 1. Potential parameters of the CNT-CS2 model. Atomic pair Potential Functional form Parameters ε, eV σ, Å C-C S Lj 12 6 () 4Ur rr ε, σ 0.0044 3.35 C-S Lj … ε, σ 0.0082 3.44 S-S Lj … ε, σ 0.0153 3.52
K. Kholmurodov et al. / Natural Science 2 (2010) 902-910 Copyright © 2010 SciRes. OPEN ACCESS 904 Figure 2. Structural presentations of the CS2 solvent (top and bottom). Figure 3. Structural presentations of the CNT- CS2 system (top and bottom). atoms and Cs―the carbon atoms of the CS2 solvent. 3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS The dynamics of the interaction between the CNT (carbon nanotube) and the CS2 solvent has been studied at different ratios of the CNT-solvent atomic concen- trations: S CNT N xN where Ns is the number of the solvent atoms and NCNT is the number of the CNT atoms. We have simulated five CNT-CS2 systems with x = 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8 and 1. We call the systems with x = 0.2 and x = 1 low- and high-density systems, respectively. The CNT consists of 800 carbon (C) atoms. Further, we denote the carbon atoms of the CS2 solvent as Cs. 3.1. Structural RDFs for the CNT-Solvent Atomic Pairs In Figure 4, we present the behavior of the radial 0246810121416 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 g(r), [C-CS] r, Ao 1: x=0.2 2: x 3: x 4: x 5: x 1 2 3 4 5 0246810121416 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 g(r), [C-S] r 0 1: x=0.2 2: x=0.4 3: x=0.6 4: x0. 8 5: x=1.0 1 2 3 4 5 Figure 4. Structural RDFs for the atomic pairs C-Cs and C-S at different ratios of the CNT– solvent atomic concentration x. S C S
K. Kholmurodov et al. / Natural Science 2 (2010) 902-910 Copyright © 2010 SciRes. OPEN ACCESS 905 distribution function (RDF) for the CNT-solvent atomic pairs C-Cs and C-S at different values of x. It can be seen that the RDF of the CNT-CS2 system at x > 0.4 obeys a similar law. For all values of x, we have clearly observed two peaks in the RDF graphs. However, for x > 0.4, Figure 4 shows an additional small RDF peak between the first two ones. This behavior of the RDF points to a structural rearrangement of the CNT-CS2 system, which is going from the low density phase (x = 0.2) into the high density phase (x = 1). The additional (third) peak in the RDF curve has also been observed on the temperature dependence (part III below). 3.2. Structural RDFs for the Solvent-Solvent Atomic Pairs In Figures 5 and 6, the radial distribution functions (RDFs) are presented for the solvent-solvent atomic pairs (Cs-Cs, Cs-S, and S-S) at different values of x. It is seen that the RDFs of the solvent atoms differ from each other by their first peaks only; the secondary peaks for all solvent-solvent atomic pairs (CS2-CS2) are similar. The RDF for the S-S atoms has a comparably large first 0 2 4 6 810121416 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 g(r), [Cs-Cs] r, A0 1: x=0.2 2: x=0.4 3: x=0.6 4: x=0.8 5: x=1.0 1 2 3 45 0246810121416 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 g(r), [Cs-S] r, Ao 1:x=0.2 2: x=0.4 3: x=0.6 4: x=0.8 5: x=1.0 1 2 3 45 Figure 5. Structural RDF for the atomic pairs Cs-Cs and Cs-S at different ratios of the CNT― solvent atomic concentration x. 0246810121416 0,5 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 g(r), [S-S] r, Ao 1: x=0.2 2: x=0.4 3: x=0.6 4: x=0.8 5: x=1.0 1 2 3 45 Figure 6. Structural RDF for the atomic pair S-S at dif ferent ratios of the CNT–solvent atomic concentration x. peak (Figure 6). This indicates that in the solvent media, the atomic pair S-S has a relatively high ordering in comparison with the Cs-Cs one. The RDF first peak for the Cs-S atomic pair (Figure 5, below) is low as com- pared with S-S ones. We attribute such behavior to an influence of CNT’s carbon (C) atoms on the CNT― solvent interaction process and ordering. 3.3. MD-Simulated Structural CNT-CS2 Configurations We have compared the MD structural configurations of the CNT-CS2 system for the low-density (x = 0.2) and high-density (x = 1) phases. In Figure 7, MD-simulated snapshots are presented for x = 0.2. Figure 7 shows the side and top views (left and righr, respectively) of the CNT-CS2 system; the snapshots correspond to the moments of t = 0 (top), 10 ps (middle), and 80 ps (bottom). It is seen that starting from arbitrarily distributed positions at the initial (t = 0) state, the solvent (CS2) atoms become more structured in the later states of the dynamics around and inside the CNT. The CS2 structuring behavior around the CNT has also been observed during temperature variation in the CNT-CS2 system. In Figure 8, the RDF curves are displayed for the low density phase (x = 0.2) depending on temperature: T = 200 K (1), T = 250 K (2), and T = 300 K (3). Figure 8 shows the RDF results for CNT-solvent atomic pairs C-Cs (left) and C-S (right). The RDFs in Figure 8 show some RDF changes (only for the first peaks). Figure 9 shows RDF curves for the solvent-solvent atomic pairs Cs-Cs (left) and Cs-S (right). A visible change in the RDF graph is seen for the atomic pair Cs-S. During the temperature variation, we observe changes for Cs-S both in the first and secondary peaks. A is seen in the RDF graph in Figure 10, the atomic
K. Kholmurodov et al. / Natural Science 2 (2010) 902-910 Copyright © 2010 SciRes. OPEN ACCESS 906 (a) Low-density phase (x = 0.2) Figure 7. Snapshots of the CNT―solvent configurations at a low density (relative atomic concen- tration x = 0.2). t = 0 t=0 t = 10 ps t = 10 ps t = 80 ps t = 80 ps
K. Kholmurodov et al. / Natural Science 2 (2010) 902-910 Copyright © 2010 SciRes. OPEN ACCESS 907 34567891011121314151 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 1: T=200K 2: T=250K 3: T=300K g(r), [C-CS] r, Ao 1 2 3 345678910111213141516 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 1: T=200K 2: T=250K 3: T=300K g(r), [C-S] r, Ao 1 2 3 Figure 8. Structural RDFs for the atomic pairs C-Cs and C-S at x = 0.2 with temperature. 345678910111213141516 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 1: T=200K 2: T=250K 3: T=300K g(r), [CS-CS] r, Ao 1 2 3 34567891011121314151 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 1: T=200K 2: T=250K 3: T=300K g(r), [CS-S] r, Ao 1 3 2 Figure 9. Structural RDF for the atomic pairs Cs-Cs and Cs-S at x = 0.2 with temperature. 345678910 11 12 13 14 15 16 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 1: T=200K 2: T=250K 3: T=300K g(r), [S-S] r, Ao 1 2 3 Figure 10. The structural RDF for the atomic pair S-S at x = 0.2 with temperature. pair S-S has a relatively high ordering in the solvent media. Also, the RDF for the S-S pair shows a strong temperature dependence. We see that the amplitude of the first peak decreases twice as the temperature in- creases from T = 200 K to 300 K. In Figure 11, the MD snapshots are presented for the high density phase (x = 1). Comparing these results with those of the low density phase (x = 0.2, Figure 7), we observe a similar structural formation of the CS2 solvent atoms around the CNT. However, the RDFs of the high-density phase are strongly specific against the low-density phase RDFs. A comparison of Figures 12-14 with Figures 8-10 is straightforward. 3.4. Patterned Structure Formation in the CNT-CS2 System One of the nontrivial observations for the CNT-CS2 system is that the solvent carbon disulfide atoms make up a patterned (layered) formation around the carbon nanotube. In Figure 15, we present a CNT-CS2 resultant structure where the atomic distributions are compared in three regions (marked by the circles 1, 2, and 3). It is seen that in regions 1 and 2, the solvent CS2 atoms have to be configured similarly to CNT’s shape. The solvent atoms inside and outside the CNT are regularly distributed within the spheres of the same radii off the CNT. In contrast, for region 3 we observe an
K. Kholmurodov et al. / Natural Science 2 (2010) 902-910 Copyright © 2010 SciRes. OPEN ACCESS 908 (b) High density phase (x = 1) Figure 11. Snapshots of the CNT―solvent configurations at a high density (relative atomic concen- tration x = 1). t = 10 ps t = 10 ps t = 0 t = 0 t = 80 ps t = 80 ps
K. Kholmurodov et al. / Natural Science 2 (2010) 902-910 Copyright © 2010 SciRes. OPEN ACCESS 909 345678910111213141516 0,9 1,0 1,1 1,2 1,3 1: T=200K 2: T=250K 3: T=300K g(r), [C-CS] r, Ao 1 23 345678910111213141516 0,9 1,0 1,1 1,2 1,3 1: T=200K 2: T=250K 3: T=300K g(r), [C-S] r, Ao 1 2 3 Figure 12. Structural RDFs for the atomic pairs C-Cs and C-S at x = 1 with temperature. 345678910111213141516 0,9 1,0 1,1 1,2 1,3 1,4 1,5 1,6 1,7 1,8 1: T=200K 2: T=250K 3: T=300K g(r), [CS-CS] r, Ao 2 3 1 2 34567891011 12 1314 15 16 0,9 1,0 1,1 1,2 1,3 1,4 1,5 1,6 1,7 1,8 1: T=200K 2: T=250K 3: T=300K g(r), [CS-S] r, Ao 1 2 3 Figure 13. Structural RDFs for the atomic pairs Cs-Cs and Cs-S at x = 1 with temperature. 3 45 6 7 8910111213141516 1,0 1,5 2,0 2,5 g(r), [S-S] r, Ao 1: T=200K 2: T=250K 3: T=300K 1 2 3 Figure 14. Structural RDF for the atomic pair S-S at x = 1 with temperature. irregular structure of the same atoms that results from solvent-solvent ineraction. It should be noted that Figure 15 shows an important example of a graphene- Figure 15. The CNT-CS2 atomic distributions for three regions shown as circles 1, 2, and 3.
K. Kholmurodov et al. / Natural Science 2 (2010) 902-910 Copyright © 2010 SciRes. OPEN ACCESS 910 like (patterned, layered) behavior. Such formations are of great importance for the applications and tech- nological uses of the CNT-CS2 systems [1-12]. 4. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work has been fulfilled under joint collaboration agreements Daresbury Laboratory, UK - Keio University, Japan - JINR, Russia. This work was supported in part by Grant in Aid for the Global Center of Excellence Program for “Center for Education and Research of Symbiotic, Safe and Secure System Design” from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport, and Technology in Japan. We thanks Prof. William Smith (Daresbury Laboratory, UK) for the software support. We would like to thank Prof. Mikhail V. Altaisky (the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna) for helpful discussions. REFERENCES [1] Zheng, L.X., O'Connell, M.J., Doorn, S.K., Liao, X.Z., Zhao, Y.H., Akhadov, E.A., Hoffbauer, M.A., Roop, B.J., et al. (2003) Nature Materials, 3(10), 673-676. [2] Mintmire, J.W., Dunlap, B.I. and White, C.T. (1992) Physical Review Letters, 68(5), 631-634. [3] Dekker, C. (1999) Carbon nanotubes as molecular quan- tum wires. Physics Today, 52(5), 22-28. http://www.phy- sicstoday.org/vol-56/iss-2/pdf/Vol52no5p22-28.pdf [4] Martel, R., Derycke, V., Lavoie, C., Appenzeller, J., Chan, K.K., Tersoff, J. and Avouris, Ph. (2001) Ambipolar elec- trical transport in semiconducting single-wall carbon nanotubes. Physical Review Letters, 87(25), 256805. [5] Tersoff, J. (1989) Modeling solid-state chemistry: In- teratomic potentials for multicomponent systems. Physi- cal Review B, 39(8), 5566-5568. [6] Affholter, K.A., Henderson, S.J., Wignall, G.D., Bunick, G.J., Haufler, R.E. and Compton, R.N. (1993) Structural characterization of C60 and C70 fullerenes by small-angle neutron scattering. Journal of Chemical Physics, 99(11), 9224-9229. [7] Melnichenko, Y.B., Wignall, G.D., Compton, R.N. and Bakale, G. (1999) Characterization of fullerenes and fullerene derivatives by small-angle neutron scattering and transmission measurements. Journal of Chemical Physics, 111(10), 4724. [8] Smorenburg, H.E., Crevecoeur, R.M., de Schepper, I.M. and de Graaf, L.A. (1995) Structure and dynamics of C60 molecules in liquid CS2 from neutron scattering. Physical Review E, 52(3), 2742-2752. [9] Migliardo, F., Magazu, V. and Migliardo, M. (2004) Structural properties of C60 in solution. Journal of Molecular Liquids, 110(1-3), 3-6. [10] Tomiyami, T., Uchiyama, S. and Shinohara, H. (1997) Solubility and partial spartial volume of C60 and C70. Chemical Physics Letters, 264, 143-148. [11] Bokare, A.D. and Patnaik, A. (2003) Microscopic diffusion model applied to C60 fullerene fractals in carbon disulphide solution. Journal of Chemical Physics, 119(8), 4529-4538. [12] Teterev, Yu., Aksenov, V.L., Avdeev, M.V. and Kholmurodov, Kh.T. (2007) Organization of solvent at interface with fullerene in solution C60/carbon disulfide by molecular bynamics simulations. In: Kholmurodov, K., Ed., Molecular Simulation Studies in Materials and Biological Sciences, Nova Science Publishers, New York, 129-134. [13] Smith, W. and Forester, T.R. (1996) The DL_POLY mo- lecular simulation package. Journal of Molecular Graph- ics, 14(3), 136-141. [14] Smith, W., Forester, T.R. and Todorov, I.T. (2008) The DL poly 2 user manual. Version 2.19, STFC Daresbury Laboratory Daresbury, Warrington WA4 4AD Cheshire, UK. [15] Kholmurodov, K., Smith, W., Yasuoka, K. and Ebisuzaki, T. (2000) Highly vectorised “link-cell” Fortran code for the DL_POLY molecular dynamics simulation package. Computer Physics Communications, 125(1-3), 167-192.
|