Intrinsically twisted inorganic nanotubes

Most theoretical studies of inorganic and carbon nanotubes deal with achiral structures, i.e. zigzag and armchair nanotubes. In terms of their integer denominators these are (n,n) and (w,0) nanotubes. There is, however, a plethora of other tubular structures with denominators (n,m) (and n m) that are chiral. Using periodic-boundary conditions, the calculational unit cells of chiral nanotubes contain a lot more atoms than those of the achiral tubes. Thus, calculations of chiral tubes with the generally used techniques are computationally demanding. 

Zhang and co-workers used this objective molecular-dynamics approach together with a density-functional tight-binding method to calculate the structural and electronic properties of M0S2 nanotubes of different diameters and chiralities. In order to characterize the objective 

However, the investigation of two structurally different systems revealed that the electronic properties may be different for different structural 

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This chapter is structured as follows we will discuss the structure of carbon and inorganic nanotubes in general in Section 2, followed by synopses of studies of structural properties of elemental inorganic nanotubes and intrinsically twisted inorgnic nanotubes in Sections 3 and 4, respectively. Section 5 discusses the encapsulation of materials in and the filling process of inorganic nanotubes, whereas Section 6 features inorganic fullerene-like structures. We conclude in Section 7. 

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