Figure 1.

Illustration of fullerene nanomanipulation inside CNT through the translation of cold and hot thermal sources. (a) Illustration of the simulation model. A fullerene is enclosed in a (10, 10) CNT which is 20.0 nm in length and subjected into a symmetrical thermal gradient, with the hot region at both ends and the cold region at the middle of CNT. Fullerene is placed at 5.0 nm away from the tube ends. (b) View of the cross section model. The closest distance between the carbon atoms of fullerene to the CNT wall is 3.4 Å, similar to the interlayer distance of graphite. (c, d) Nanomanipulation is achieved through the translation of cold and hot thermal sources, correspondingly. The initial position of C₆₀ was placed at one-fourth of the nanotube, middle of cold and hot sources. The translation of thermal sources was performed three times, each to move about 1.2 nm along the nanotube, while keeping a fixed distance between cold and hot sources. The C₆₀ molecular is trapped around the cold source position and moves with the thermostats.