It was reported that a uniaxial tensile stress strongly enhanced the shrinking of a carbon nanotube under low-energy electron irradiation, although electron irradiation of a free-standing carbon nanotube caused almost negligible deformation without tensile stress. The characteristic features of the shrunk nanotube were periodic wavy deformations having a periodicity of 5 to 10nm, which could be introduced into single-walled or multi-walled nanotubes. The shrinking deformation appeared to be maximum at about 5keV, but the deformation mode changed completely at around 4keV, where the deformation seems involve competition between shrinking and elongation so that the total shrinking ratio was minimized.

Generation and Repair of Defect for Carbon Nanotube under Tensile Stress by Low Acceleration Electron Beam Irradiation. R.Ueki, R.Endo, T.Hikata, S.Okubo, R.Utsunomiya, J.I.Fujita: Microelectronic Engineering, 2011, 88[8], 2516-8