Abstract Submitted to the NANOTUBE'02 Workshop:

Nanoscopic peapods, which consist of encapsulated arrays of C60 molecules nested inside single wall nanotubes (SWNTs), represent a new class of nanoscale materials having tunable properties. We report the first electronic measurements of this system using a scanning tunneling microscope (STM). Our results demonstrate that the encapsulated C60 modify the local electronic structure of the SWNT cage. Furthermore, our measurements and calculations show that a periodic array of C60 molecules gives rise to a new hybrid electronic band, which derives its character from both the SWNT states and the C60 molecular orbitals. Our experiments and theoretical calculations suggest that encapsulation provides additional means of control over the electronic states of SWNTs, which are already at the heart of many proposed approaches towards nanoelectronics.