Single (S)- Double (D)- and Multi-walled (MW) carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were dynamically (shock) compressed to ~50 GPa. The recovered after shock material was characterized by Raman spectroscopy and HRTEM. No traces of diamond were found in the samples. DW nanotubes show similar to SWCNTs transformation into a mixture of multilayer graphene (MLG) and two-phase material comprised of disordered carbon and nano-sized graphene clusters after the total collapse and posterior destruction of the tubes under the shock. The coherent scatterers’ size (L_a) was estimated at about 25 nm for both SW- and DWCNTs-derived MLG material, but with a notoriously higher defects density in the latter case. Remarkably, some of the MWCNTs survived 50 GPa shock compression though severely damaged via tubes “chopping", outer walls “peeling off" and/or “unzipping". Prospectives of using CNTs as shock-absorbing material in demanding aplications are highlighted.
 

carbon nanotubes, dynamic compression