This suggests that during heating, the Sn within the internal space of the CNF diffuses to the outside. Figure 5 shows Sn maps of the CNF during heating. The Sn in the carbon wall and the internal space observed is completely eliminated with continuous heating, as shown in the Sn map in Figure 5b, which was acquired

from the CNF area shown in Figure 5a. This result demonstrates that Sn in the CNF’s carbon wall and internal space completely diffuses from inside the carbon wall and KPT-8602 in vitro internal space to outside the CNF and may have evaporated. Figure 4 In situ heating TEM images of Sn-filled CNFs heated at 400°C. (a) At the beginning of heating, (b) 1 min, (c) 3 min, and (d) 5 min. Figure 5 ETEM images and Sn maps of Sn-filled CNF (a, b) before and (c, d) after heating. These results clearly show that Sn can diffuse into the carbon wall of CNFs INK1197 cell line fabricated by MPCVD. The method of Sn diffusion into and out of the CNF is peculiar. It is certain that Sn diffused in the carbon wall because Sn was perfectly

covered by the carbon wall (Figure 4). The carbon wall had a graphite structure (Figure 2b), and there are two possible routes for the Sn diffusion. One is the 0.33- to 0.34-nm gap selleck inhibitor between the graphite layers, and the other is a hole in the six-membered carbon ring, which is 0.14 nm on a side [21]. The maximum diameter of a six-membered ring is 0.28 nm, which is narrower than the Glutathione peroxidase distance between graphite layers. Hence, we speculate that Sn atoms diffuse preferentially in the space between the graphite layers. However, the carbon walls of our CNFs contain defects (Figure 2b), and hence, they exhibit a disordered structure similar to disordered graphite layers, higher membered carbon rings (e.g. seven-

and eight-membered rings), and disjointedness in graphite layers. These structures are believed to function as the new third route for the Sn diffusion. Ng et al. suggested these three routes for the diffusion of Li ion into the carbon wall. In carbon rings, Li ions diffused more easily owing to defects such as those in carbon rings with more than six members [22]. In particular, carbon walls near the top of the CNFs have three-dimensionally curved walls such as those in fullerene, and hence, higher membered carbon rings exist at the top of the CNFs, leading to easy Sn diffusion there. As observed in Figure 4, Sn was eliminated from the top of the carbon wall of CNFs, which further suggests that Sn easily diffuses from the top of the CNFs. These in situ heating observation results provided us with remarkably important information that Sn can diffuse from within CNF carbon walls with defects to the outside of the CNF. This suggests that materials of approximately the same size or smaller than the Sn atoms can diffuse through a defective carbon wall. It is expected that the Sn-filled CNFs fabricated by MPCVD in this study can be utilized for hydrogen storage.