Transport in Nanotubes: Effect of Remote Impurity Scattering

Theory of the remote Coulomb impurity scattering in single--wall carbon nanotubes is developed within one--electron approximation. Boltzmann equation is solved within drift--diffusion model to obtain the tube conductivity. The conductivity depends on the type of the nanotube bandstructure (metal or semiconductor) and on the electron Fermi level. We found exponential dependence of the conductivity on the Fermi energy due to the Coulomb scattering rate has a strong dependence on the momentum transfer. We calculate intra-- and inter--subband scattering rates and present general expressions for the conductivity. Numerical results, as well as obtained analytical expressions, show that the degenerately doped semiconductor tubes may have very high mobility unless the doping level becomes too high and the inter--subband transitions impede the electron transport.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure

Large radius exciton in single-walled carbon nanotubes

The spectrum of large radius exciton in an individual semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) is described within the framework of elementary potential model, in which exciton is modeled as bound state of two oppositely charged quasi-particles confined on the tube surface. Due to the parity of the interaction potential the exciton states split into the odd and even series. It is shown that for the bare and screened Coulomb electron-hole (e-h) potentials the binding energy of even excitons in the ground state well exceeds the energy gap. The factors preventing the collapse of single-electron states in isolated semiconducting SWCNTs are discussed.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figure, 5 table

Photoconductivity of biased graphene

Graphene is a promising candidate for optoelectronic applications such as photodetectors, terahertz imagers, and plasmonic devices. The origin of photoresponse in graphene junctions has been studied extensively and is attributed to either thermoelectric or photovoltaic effects. In addition, hot carrier transport and carrier multiplication are thought to play an important role. Here we report the intrinsic photoresponse in biased but otherwise homogeneous graphene. In this classic photoconductivity experiment, the thermoelectric effects are insignificant. Instead, the photovoltaic and a photo-induced bolometric effect dominate the photoresponse due to hot photocarrier generation and subsequent lattice heating through electron-phonon cooling channels respectively. The measured photocurrent displays polarity reversal as it alternates between these two mechanisms in a backgate voltage sweep. Our analysis yields elevated electron and phonon temperatures, with the former an order higher than the latter, confirming that hot electrons drive the photovoltaic response of homogeneous graphene near the Dirac point

Thermal infrared emission reveals the Dirac point movement in biased graphene

Graphene is a 2-dimensional material with high carrier mobility and thermal conductivity, suitable for high-speed electronics. Conduction and valence bands touch at the Dirac point. The absorptivity of single-layer graphene is 2.3%, nearly independent of wavelength. Here we investigate the thermal radiation from biased graphene transistors. We find that the emission spectrum of single-layer graphene follows that of a grey body with constant emissivity (1.6 \pm 0.8)%. Most importantly, we can extract the temperature distribution in the ambipolar graphene channel, as confirmed by Stokes/anti-Stokes measurements. The biased graphene exhibits a temperature maximum whose location can be controlled by the gate voltage. We show that this peak in temperature reveals the spatial location of the minimum in carrier density, i.e. the Dirac point.Comment: Accepted in principle at Nature Nanotechnolog

Helicity and broken symmetry of DNA-nanotube hybrids

We study breaking of the “supersymmetry" of an intrinsically achiral armchair carbon nanotube by means of a helical perturbation. Lowering of the symmetry results in the appearance of a non-zero effective mass for nanotube low-energy excitations, which otherwise are massless Dirac fermions. Other important consequences of the symmetry breaking are opening of gaps in the energy spectrum and shifting of the Fermi points, which we classify according to their functional dependence on the nanotube and helix parameters. Within each class the gaps are proportional to the inverse of the nanotube radius, and appear to be sensitive to the exact position of the helix in a unit cell. These results are of immediate importance for the study of DNA-nanotube complexes, and can be verified by means of optical/electron spectroscopy or tunneling microscopy