High-Field Electrical Transport in Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes

TL;DR

This paper investigates the high-field electrical transport properties of metallic single-wall carbon nanotubes, revealing their ability to carry extremely high current densities and identifying phonon emission as the main scattering process at high voltages.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed measurement of intrinsic high-field transport in individual metallic single-wall carbon nanotubes and explains the conductance drop via phonon emission mechanisms.

Findings

Nanotubes can carry currents exceeding 10^9 A/cm^2

Conductance drops sharply at high bias due to electron scattering

Optical phonon emission explains high-field transport behavior

Abstract

Using low-resistance electrical contacts, we have measured the intrinsic high-field transport properties of metallic single-wall carbon nanotubes. Individual nanotubes appear to be able to carry currents with a density exceeding 10^9 A/cm^2. As the bias voltage is increased, the conductance drops dramatically due to scattering of electrons. We show that the current-voltage characteristics can be explained by considering optical or zone-boundary phonon emission as the dominant scattering mechanism at high field.