Discussion Topic Posted for the NANOTUBE-99 Workshop:

Ideally the structural and electronic properties of SWNT would be made to order by selective attachment of functional groups to the walls of the nanotube. The difficulty faced by chemists is to direct a reaction to a specific site on the tube wall. Tube w alls have less strain and are therefore less active than the tube ends. Ideally, some method must be found to somewhat favor the selectivity of wall reactions over tube end reactions. There is still some question about our ability to select the reaction s ite, since reaction with amorphous impurities stuck to the nanotubes would give the appearance of a successful wall derivitization. Evidence for a chemical method that makes sense was recently reported (Chemical attachment of organic functional groups to single-walled carbon nanotube material, Y. Chen et al., J. Mater. Res. (1998) Vol. 13, No. 9, 2423-2431) by direction of the reactive groups to natural imperfections already present in the walls of bent and misshapen tubes. ! A specific wavelength excitation might help to improve the odds for overall wall site selection. Perhaps a reaction could even be directed at imperfections, if the presence of certain wall structural imperfections could be theoretically shown to have a s omewhat altered wavelength of the breathing modes at the wall imperfection sites.

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