Stone Wales defect

The Stone Wales defect is a defect that occurs on carbon nanotubes and is thought to have important implications for nanotube's mechanical properties. The defects are thought to be responsible for nanoscale plasticity and the brittle-ductile transitions in carbon nanotubes.

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One of the plausible processes for isomerization of the fullerene is the so-called Stone-Wales or "pyracylene" transformation, which is the 90° rotation of two carbon atoms with respect to the midpoint of the bond. The Stone-Wales transformation is also used to describe the structural changes of sp²-bonded carbon nanosystems. For example, it has been proposed that the coalescence process of fullerenes or carbon nanotubes may occur through a sequence of such a rearrangement. By the Stone-Wales transformation, four hexagons are changed into two pentagons and two heptagons. It is a kind of Stone-Wales defect.

References

• Princeton's Car Group
• Defects in Graphene and Carbon Nanotubes