It is expected that single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) have high thermal conductivity along the tube axis and that the thermal conductivities depend on their structure, such as length, diameter, chirality (n, m), and so forth. Although many experimental measurements of the thermal conductivity have been reported, the SWCNT structure was not characterized sufficiently. In particular, the chirality was not assigned, and it was not confirmed whether SWCNT was isolated or not (bundled with multiplicate SWCNTs). Therefore, measured values widely vary (101 to 104 W/(m·K)) so far. Here, we measured the thermal conductivity of chirality-assigned SWCNTs, which were individually suspended, by using photoluminescence (PL) imaging spectroscopy. The temperature distribution along the tube axis was obtained, and the temperature dependence of the thermal conductivity was measured in a wide-temperature range (from 350 to 1000 K). For (9, 8) SWCNTs with 10–12 μm in length, the thermal conductivity was 1166 ± 243 W/(m·K) at 400 K. The proposed PL imaging spectroscopy enables to measure the thermal conductivity of SWCNTs with high precision and without any contacts, and it is an effective method in the temperature distribution measurements of nanomaterials.

For elucidation of the adsorption effects on the vibration properties of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs), photoluminescence and Raman scattering spectra from SWNTs at different vapor pressure of water were simultaneously measured and a molecular dynamics (MD) simulation was performed. The water vapor pressure dependence and its tube diameter (d(tube)) dependence of the frequency of the radial breathing mode (RBM) peaks (omega(RBM)) and the optical transition energy (E-ii) indicate that the physical adsorption is quite important, and both omega(RBM) and E-ii clearly depend on the number density of adsorption molecules on the SWNT surface. A simple adsorption model, where the vibrational coupling between the surrounding adsorption layer and SWNTs via van der Waals interaction is considered for RBM, reproduces the experimental and MD simulation results of omega(RBM) in a wide dtube range for various SWNTs, such as isolated SWNTs in vacuum, SWNTs with adsorption water layer, and even bundled SWNTs. On the basis of the model, the variation of the relationship between omega(RBM) and E-ii in a Kataura plot for various SWNT samples can also be understood generally as the "environmental effects."

Hydrophilicity or hydrophobicity is a macroscopic property of the surface, and its atomic scale understanding has not been established. We have studied adsorption of water molecules on the "hydrophobic" carbon nanotube surface at room temperature in water vapor. Based on optical measurements of individual single-walled carbon nanotubes suspended between micropillars in water vapor together with molecular dynamics simulations, we found that water molecules form a stable adsorption layer of 1-2 ML thickness on the nanotube surface and they show rapid adsorption and desorption transition at a critical pressure. This adsorption layer is created by lateral hydrogen bonding of water molecules confined in the weak van der Waals potential of the surface. In spite of hydrophobic hydration, carbon nanotubes exhibit hydrophobicity macroscopically.