2006 Volume 75 Issue 4 Pages 441-446
Original approaches using plasma technology have been performed in order to create carbon-based nanostructures with new properties, as the basis of which various types of unique plasma sources are devised, such as pair-ion plasma, alkali-fullerene plasma, alkali-halogen plasma, microelectrolyte plasma, solution-phase discharge plasma. As a result of the nanoscopic process control of these plasmas, we have succeeded in creating novel nanostructures such as fullerene dimers, purified alkali-metal and atomic-nitrogen encapsulated fullerenes, freestanding individual pristine single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs), ’alkali-metal/fullerene’ junction structure encapsulated SWNTs, and biomolecular-DNA encapsulated SWNTs. Solely C60 and Cs encapsulated SWNTs are found to give rise to p- and n-type semiconducting properties, respectively.
