Electrical Transport Properties of Carbon Nanotube Metal-Semiconductor Heterojunction

Abstract

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been proved to have promising applicability in various fields of science and technology. Their fascinating mechanical, electrical, thermal, optical properties have caught the attention of today’s world. We have discussed here the great possibility of using CNTs in electronic devices. CNTs can be both metallic and semiconducting depending on their chirality. When two CNTs of different chirality are joined together via topological defects, they may acquire rectifying diode property. We have joined two tubes of different chiralities through circumferential Stone–Wales defects and calculated their density of states by nearest neighbor tight binding approximation. Transmission function is also calculated to analyze whether the junctions can be used as electronic devices. Different heterojunctions are modeled and analyzed in this study. Internal stresses in the heterojunctions are also calculated by molecular dynamics simulation.