Electronic and Transport Properties of Radially Deformed Double-walled Carbon Nanotube Intramolecular Junction

TL;DR

This study investigates how radial deformation affects the electronic and transport properties of double-walled carbon nanotube intramolecular junctions, revealing significant conductance changes and potential for nanoscale electronic device applications.

Contribution

It combines tight-binding and first-principle calculations to analyze the effects of radial squash on DWNT IMJs, proposing a new carbon-based nanoscale electronic device.

Findings

Heavily squashed DWNT becomes an insulator-coated metallic wire.

Radial squash significantly alters conductance near the Fermi level.

Resonance conductance peaks appear at specific energies.

Abstract

The electronic and transport property of a radially deformed double-walled carbon nanotube (DWNT) intramolecular junction (IMJ) has been studied by the tight-binding (TB) model combined with the first-principle calculations. The geometrical structures of the DWNT IMJ have been first optimized in energy by the universal force field (UFF) method. It is found that when heavily squashed, the DWNT will become an insulator-coated metallic wire, and the conductance near the Fermi level has been significantly changed by the radial squash. Specially, several resonance conductance peaks appear at some energies in the conduction band of the squashed DWNT IMJ. Finally, we have also investigated the conductance variation due to change of the length of the central semiconductor in the squashed DWNT IMJ. Furthermore, a promising pure carbon nanoscale electronic device is proposed based on the DWNT IMJ.