Accurate determination of the atomic structure of multiwalled carbon nanotubes by electron diffraction

We report a new method that allows direct, systematic and accurate determination of the atomic structure of multiwalled carbon nanotubes by analyzing the scattering intensities on the non-equatorial layer lines in the electron diffraction pattern. As an example to illustrate the method, we will present complete structure determination of a quadruple-walled carbon nanotube. It was determined that the chiral indices of the four shells were: [32,1], [26,24], [39,25], and [64,2]. All are semiconducting in this case. We also found that the inter-tubular distance varied from 0.36 nm to 0.5 nm with a mean value of 0.42 nm.