Bismuth nanotubes: potential semiconducting nanomaterials

We employed the first-principles molecular dynamics method to study the stabilities and electronic properties of bismuth nanotubes. There are some stable bismuth nanotubes. The strain energies of Bi(n, n) nanotubes follow the classical 1/D-square strain law. For small Bi(n, 0) nanotubes, the strain energies show a non-linear dependence on 1/D-square. Bismuth nanotubes are predicted to be semiconducting in both (n, n) and (n, 0) forms. For small-diameter bismuth nanotubes, the band structure varies strongly because of hybridizations. As the diameters are larger than 18 A, the band gaps of both Bi(n, n) and Bi(n, 0) nanotubes approach 0.63 eV, corresponding to the band gap of a bismuth sheet at the F point. Thus, bismuth nanotubes are seen as potential semiconductor nanomaterials for future nano-electronics applications. (Author)