An electromechanical nanothermometer based on thermal vibrations of carbon nanotube walls

Abstract

A new concept is proposed for an electromechanical nanothermometer. The temperature measurements are performed by measuring the conductivity of the nanosystem, which depends substantially on the temperature due to the relative thermal vibrations of nanoobjects forming the nanosystem. The possibility of implementing the proposed concept is demonstrated using double-walled carbon nanotubes as an example. The dependence of the interwall interaction energy on the relative displacement of the nanotube walls is calculated within the density-functional theory. The conductivity of the nanotubes is calculated in the frame-work of the two-band Hubbard model. The calculations of the wall interaction energy and the conductivity are used to estimate the sizes of the nanothermometers based on different double-walled carbon nanotubes. It is shown that the nanothermometer under consideration can be used for measuring the temperature in localized regions with sizes of the order of several hundred nanometers.