• Carbon letters
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• v.27
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• pp.35-41
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• 2018

Surfactant-wrapped separation methods of metallic and semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) can result in large changes in intrinsic physical and chemical properties due to electronic interactions between a nanotube and a surfactant. Our approach to synthesize SWCNTs with an electronic feature relied on utilizing carbon nanorings, [n] cycloparaphenylenes ([n]CPPs), which are the fundamental unit of armchair type SWCNTs (a-SWCNTs) that possess a metallic feature without any surfactants. To obtain long tubular structures from [n]CPPs, the host-guest complexes formed with well-aligned [n]CPP hosts and various fullerene guests on a silicon substrate were pyrolyzed under an ethanol gas flow at a high temperature with focused-ultraviolet laser irradiation. The pyrolyzed [n]CPPs were observed to transform from nanorings to tubular structures with 1.5-1.7 nm diameters corresponding to the employed diameter of [n]CPPs. Our approach suggests that [n]CPPs are useful for structure-controlled synthesis of SWCNTs.