Electrical transport properties of nanoscale devices based on carbon nanotubes

Abstract

One-dimensional carbon nanotubes are considered as promising materials for nanoscale devices. A review is given here on the electrical transport properties of single-walled, double-walled, and telescoping carbon nanotubes studied by first-principles calculations. We first investigate the effect of carbon vacancies on the electrical properties of single-walled nanotubes, considering reconstruction around vacancies and randomness in their distribution. The band structure is severely modified by increasing the number of vacancies, which results in the gap opening. Next, we consider the band structure of double-walled nanotubes and the transport properties of telescoping nanotubes, and discuss the effect of intertube interactions on the electronic and transport properties and the accuracy of tight-binding calculations. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.