Pseudo-break imaging of carbon nanotubes for determining elastic bending energies

One-dimensional (1D) nanomaterials easily bend due to perturbations from their surroundings or their own behaviors. This phenomenon not only impacts the performances of various devices but has also been employed to develop a variety of new functional devices, in which the bending energies of the nanomaterials determine the device performances. However, measuring the energies of such nanomaterials is extremely difficult. Herein, pseudo-break imaging of 1D nanomaterials has been proposed and realized on individual carbon nanotubes (CNTs), in which a CNT appears to break and has a fracture but is actually intact. This imaging approach provides the values of the bending energies of the CNTs with an accuracy of 1–50 eV. Furthermore, this imaging approach can manipulate the bending shapes and energies of CNTs. This work presents a protocol for bending analysis and manipulation, which are vital to fundamental and applied studies of 1D nanomaterials.