Intrinsic phonon properties of double-walled carbon nanotubes

Double-walled carbon nanotubes (DWNT) are made of two concentric and weakly van der Waals coupled single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT). DWNTs are the simplest systems for studying the mechanical and electronic interactions between concentric carbon layers. In this paper we review recent results concerning the intrinsic features of phonons of DWNTs obtained from Raman experiments performed on index-identified DWNTs. The effect of the interlayer distance on the strength of the mechanical and electronic coupling between the layers, and thus on the frequencies of the Raman-active modes, namely the radial breathing-like modes (RBLMs) and G-modes, are evidenced and discussed. (paper)