2,661 research outputs found
Impact Excitation by Hot Carriers in Carbon Nanotubes
We investigate theoretically the efficiency of intra-molecular hot carrier
induced impact ionization and excitation processes in carbon nanotubes. The
electron confinement and reduced screening lead to drastically enhanced
excitation efficiencies over those in bulk materials. Strong excitonic coupling
favors neutral excitations over ionization, while the impact mechanism
populates a different set of states than that produced by photoexcitation. The
excitation rate is strongly affected by optical phonon excitation and a simple
scaling of the rate with the field strength and optical phonon temperature is
obtained.Comment: 5 pages 4 figure
Electron Interference Effects on the Conductance of Doped Carbon Nanotubes
We investigate the effects of impurity scattering on the conductance of
metallic carbon nanotubes as a function of the relative separation of the
impurities. First we compute the conductance of a clean (6,6) tube, and the
effect of model gold contacts on this conductance. Then, we compute the effect
of introducing a single, two, and three oxygen atom impurities. We find that
the conductance of a single-oxygen-doped (6,6) nanotube decreases by about 30 %
with respect to that of the perfect nanotube. The presence of a second doping
atom induces strong changes of the conductance which, however, depend very
strongly on the relative position of the two oxygen atoms. We observe regular
oscillations of the conductance that repeat over an O-O distance that
corresponds to an integral number of half Fermi-wavelengths ().
These fluctuations reflect strong electron interference phenomena produced by
electron scattering from the oxygen defects whose contribution to the
resistance of the tube cannot be obtained by simply summing up their individual
contributions.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures (eps and gif), to appear in J.Phys.Che
Exciton Ionization, Franz-Keldysh and Stark Effects in Carbon Nanotubes
We calculate the optical properties of carbon nanotubes in an external static
electric field directed along the tube axis. We predict strong Franz-Keldysh
oscillations in the first and second band-to-band absorption peaks, quadratic
Stark effect of the first two excitons, and the field dependence of the bound
exciton ionization rate for a wide range of tube chiralities. We find that the
phonon assisted mechanism dominates the dissociation rate in electro-optical
devices due to the hot optical phonons. We predict a quadratic dependence of
the Sommerfeld factor on the electric field and its increase up to 2000% at the
critical field of the full exciton dissociation.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, Nano Letters (2007
Exciton-phonon effects in carbon nanotube optical absorption
We find that the optical properties of carbon nanotubes reflect remarkably
strong effects of exciton-phonon coupling. Tight-binding calculations show that
a significant fraction of the spectral weight of the absorption peak is
transferred to a distinct exciton+phonon sideband, which is peaked at around
200 meV above the main absorption peak. This sideband provides a distinctive
signature of the excitonic character of the optical transition. The
exciton-phonon coupling is reflected in a dynamical structural distortion,
which contributes a binding energy of up to 100 meV. The distortion is
surprisingly long-ranged, and is strongly dependent on chirality.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Radiative Lifetime of Excitons in Carbon Nanotubes
We calculate the radiative lifetime and energy bandstructure of excitons in
semiconducting carbon nanotubes, within a tight-binding approach. In the limit
of rapid interband thermalization, the radiative decay rate is maximized at
intermediate temperatures, decreasing at low temperature because the
lowest-energy excitons are optically forbidden. The intrinsic phonons cannot
scatter excitons between optically active and forbidden bands, so
sample-dependent extrinsic effects that break the symmetries can play a central
role. We calculate the diameter-dependent energy splittings between singlet and
triplet excitons of different symmetries, and the resulting dependence of
radiative lifetime on temperature and tube diameter.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Mobility in semiconducting carbon nanotubes at finite carrier density
Carbon nanotube field-effect transistors operate over a wide range of
electron or hole density, controlled by the gate voltage. Here we calculate the
mobility in semiconducting nanotubes as a function of carrier density and
electric field, for different tube diameters and temperature. The low-field
mobility is a non-monotonic function of carrier density, and varies by as much
as a factor of 4 at room temperature. At low density, with increasing field the
drift velocity reaches a maximum and then exhibits negative differential
mobility, due to the non-parabolicity of the bandstructure. At a critical
density 0.35-0.5 electrons/nm, the drift velocity saturates at
around one third of the Fermi velocity. Above , the velocity increases
with field strength with no apparent saturation.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Relaxation of Optically Excited Carriers in Graphene
We explore the relaxation of photo-excited graphene by solving a transient
Boltzmann transport equation with electron-phonon (e-ph) and electron-electron
(e-e) scattering. Simulations show that when the excited carriers are relaxed
by e-ph scattering only, a population inversion can be achieved at energies
determined by the photon energy. However, e-e scattering quickly thermalizes
the carrier energy distributions washing out the negative optical conductivity
peaks. The relaxation rates and carrier multiplication effects are presented as
a function of photon energy and dielectric constant.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
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