Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Bi-Carboxyl Sidewall Functionalized Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes in Water
Functionalized single-walled carbon nanotubes (f-SWNTs) have attracted great interest due to their enhancement of SWNT properties leading to an increase in potential applications beyond those of pristine SWNT. In this work, we have investigated the behavior of open-end (9,0) bi-carboxyl sidewall functionalized SWNTs in water using molecular dynamics (MD) technique within GROMACS software package based on the OPLS force fields with modified charges obtained from the first principles calculations. The model tubes including perfect and defective nanotubes covalently functionalized by bi-carboxylic groups on different sidewall surface orientation were fully optimized by B3LYP/6-31G(d,p). The simulations were performed at the constant volume and temperature in a rectangular box with periodic boundary conditions in which each system contains one model tube and ~1680 water molecules. The results form MD simulations showed that functionalization on the central carbon atom in the (C1,C ́1)SW-defective sites strongly affects on the dynamic behavior of CNT in water. Results showed that the hydrophilic behavior of the functionalized SWNT has been improved over the pristine and defective nanotubes.