Charge Screening Effect in Metallic Carbon Nanotubes

Charge screening effect in metallic carbon nanotubes is investigated in a model including the one-dimensional long-range Coulomb interaction. It is pointed out that an external charge which is being fixed spatially is screened by internal electrons so that the resulting object becomes electrically neutral. We found that the screening length is given by about the diameter of a nanotube.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure

Growth of (110) Diamond using pure Dicarbon

We use a density-functional based tight-binding method to study diamond growth steps by depositing dicarbon species onto a hydrogen-free diamond (110) surface. Subsequent C_2 molecules are deposited on an initially clean surface, in the vicinity of a growing adsorbate cluster, and finally, near vacancies just before completion of a full new monolayer. The preferred growth stages arise from C_2n clusters in near ideal lattice positions forming zigzag chains running along the [-110] direction parallel to the surface. The adsorption energies are consistently exothermic by 8--10 eV per C_2, depending on the size of the cluster. The deposition barriers for these processes are in the range of 0.0--0.6 eV. For deposition sites above C_2n clusters the adsorption energies are smaller by 3 eV, but diffusion to more stable positions is feasible. We also perform simulations of the diffusion of C_2 molecules on the surface in the vicinity of existing adsorbate clusters using an augmented Lagrangian penalty method. We find migration barriers in excess of 3 eV on the clean surface, and 0.6--1.0 eV on top of graphene-like adsorbates. The barrier heights and pathways indicate that the growth from gaseous dicarbons proceeds either by direct adsorption onto clean sites or after migration on top of the existing C_2n chains.Comment: 8 Pages, 7 figure

Aharonov-Bohm spectral features and coherence lengths in carbon nanotubes

The electronic properties of carbon nanotubes are investigated in the presence of disorder and a magnetic field parallel or perpendicular to the nanotube axis. In the parallel field geometry, the $\phi_{0}(=hc/e)$-periodic metal-insulator transition (MIT) induced in metallic or semiconducting nanotubes is shown to be related to a chirality-dependent shifting of the energy of the van Hove singularities (VHSs). The effect of disorder on this magnetic field-related mechanism is considered with a discussion of mean free paths, localization lengths and magnetic dephasing rate in the context of recent experiments.Comment: 22 pages, 6 Postscript figures. submitted to Phys. Rev.

Electronic properties and quantum transport in Graphene-based nanostructures

61.46.-w Structure of nanoscale materials, 73.63.-b Electronic transport in nanoscale materials and structures,