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Session U25 - Focus Session: Carbon Nanotubes: Gas Adsorption and Transport.
FOCUS session, Thursday afternoon, March 21
205, Indiana Convention Center

[U25.009] ^4He and ^4He - H_2 Desorption from Single-Wall Carbon Nanotube Bundles

Y.H. Kahng, R.B. Hallock (Laboratory for Low Temperature Physics, Dept. of Physics, Univ. of Mass., Amherst, MA, 01003), E. Dujardin (School of Chemistry, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TS, UK)

We have studied pure ^4He desorption and ^4He - H_2 codesorption from single-walled carbon nanotube bundles. It is observed that the presence of H_2 suppresses ^4He adsorption while H_2 adsorption is not effected by the presence of ^4He. This suggests that the adsorption of Hydrogen occurs primarily on the outer grooves of the nanotube bundles [1], or that the Hydrogen binding energy is higher than Helium in the interstitial sites of the bundles, in agreement with recent theoretical expectations [2]. We expect to report on further experiments on Helium codesorption with other inert atoms as results are available.

[1] G. Stan, M.J. Bojan, S. Curtarolo, S.M. Gatica, and M.W. Cole, Phys. Rev. B 62, 2173 (2000). [2] M.M. Calbi, F. Toigo, and M.W. Cole, Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 5062 (2001).

Part U of program listing