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Regulating Rolling and Sliding of Carbon Nanotubes on Graphite Through Doping and Charging

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Abstract

Nanostructures with controllable motion are indispensable to developing nanodevices. However, it still presents a fundamental challenge to effectively regulate the relative motion at the nanoscale, such as sliding and rolling. Since the potential energy surface that dictates the relative motion at the nanoscale is intrinsically determined by the underlying electron density, we employ doping and charging to regulate the sliding and rolling of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) on graphite (GRA). Herein, we focus on the single-walled (6, 6) CNTs on the fixed monolayer graphene, using density functional theory. We find that charging effectively enables N-doped CNTs to switch between sliding and rolling on GRA, whereas other dopants, such as B, Al, and P elements, generally cause the sliding preference for CNTs on GRA. Our findings uncover the difference and correlation between doping and charging in tuning the charge density as well as nanofriction. Therefore, our study is expected to provide some guide to the modulation of nano(electro) mechanical devices from the electronic point of view.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge support from the Young Thousand Talents Program of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 11974128, 22173034, 52130101), the Program for Innovative Research Team (in Science and Technology) in University of Jilin Province, and the computing resources of High Performance Computing Center of Jilin University.

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National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 11974128, 22173034, 52130101).

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  1. Key Laboratory of Automobile Materials, Ministry of Education, and College of Materials Science and Engineering, Jilin University, Renmin Street, Changchun, 130022, China

    Cong Ma, Quan Ming Li & Wang Gao

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Supplementary file1 (PDF 16024 kb). We supply one supplementary PDF file, containing five sections: 1. Computational details; 2. Doping effect: N and B; 3. Doping effect: P and Al; 4. Charging effect: N and B doping; 5. Mechanism. The online version contains supplementary material available at https:

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Ma, C., Li, Q.M. & Gao, W. Regulating Rolling and Sliding of Carbon Nanotubes on Graphite Through Doping and Charging. Tribol Lett 70, 112 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11249-022-01653-9

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