Structural and vibrational properties of deformed carbon nanotubes

The fantastic variation of the physical properties of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and their bundles under mechanical strain and hydrostatic pressure makes them promising materials for fabricating nanoscale electromechanical coupling devices or transducers. In this paper, we review the recent progress in this field, with much emphasis on our first-principles numerical studies on the structural and vibrational properties of the deformed CNTs under uniaxial and torsional strains, and hydrostatic pressure. The nonresonant Raman spectra of the deformed CNTs are also introduced, which are calculated by the first-principles calculations and the empirical bond polarizability model.