Localization of electronic states by fullerene charges in carbon nanotubes

TL;DR

This paper investigates how charged fullerenes inside carbon nanotubes influence local electronic properties, revealing localized states and gap narrowing effects consistent with experimental observations.

Contribution

It demonstrates that electrostatic interactions from encapsulated fullerenes can create localized electronic states and modulate the energy gap in carbon nanotubes.

Findings

Charged fullerenes induce localized electronic states.

Electrostatic interactions cause gap narrowing.

Results align with experimental spatial gap modulation.

Abstract

We study the effects of the electrostatic interaction produced by charged fullerenes encapsulated in carbon nanotubes, showing that they are able to modify locally the electronic density of states in the hybrid system. In the cases where the interaction is felt as an attractive potential by the electrons in the nanotube, localized electronic states are formed in the nanotubes around the position of the fullerenes. This produces an effective narrowing of the gap in semiconducting nanotubes over a distance of a few nanometers, in agreement with the spatial modulation of the gap observed in the experiments.