A first-principles study was made of the electron-nuclear hyperfine-interaction in achiral single-walled carbon nanotubes. It was shown that while hyperfine coupling was small in perfect nanotubes, it was significantly enhanced near to lattice defects such as vacancies and Stone-Wales pairs. The enhancement of hyperfine coupling near to the defects varied considerably in different nanotubes. This was suggested to pave the way to the simultaneous identification of the chirality of carbon nanotubes and the defects inside them by using sophisticated magnetic resonance techniques.

Enhancement of Electron-Nuclear Hyperfine Interaction at Lattice Defects in Semiconducting Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes Studied by ab initio Density Functional Theory Calculations. V.Zólyomi, V.Ivády, A.Gali: Physical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics, 2012, 86[23], 235433