American Physical Society, Physical Review Letters, 7(84), p. 1483-1486, 2000
DOI: 10.1103/physrevlett.84.1483
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Using Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate the possibility of an orientational melting transition within a "rope" of (10,10) carbon nanotubes. When twisting nanotubes bundle up during the synthesis, orientational dislocations or twistons arise from the competition between the anisotropic inter-tube interactions, which tend to align neighboring tubes, and the torsion rigidity that tends to keep individual tubes straight. We map the energetics of a rope containing twistons onto a lattice gas model and find that the onset of a free "diffusion" of twistons, corresponding to orientational melting, occurs at T_OM > 160 K. Comment: 4 page LaTeX file with 3 figures (10 PostScript files)