Conductance of Metallic Carbon Nanotubes Network

Abstract

The conductance of the carbon nanotubes (CNTs) network incorporates intertube and intratube conductance. Using the Anderson and tight-binding models, we calculate both conductances in the armchair and chiral metallic CNTs. We found that, at room temperature, the intertube conductance dominates in CNTs with larger localization lengths. Intertube conductance includes electronic and phonon-assisted junction conductance. We have revealed that the electronic conductance of a relaxed structure is around an order of magnitude larger than an unrelaxed structure. We found that the phonon-assisted conductance of armchair CNTs is comparable with their electronic conductance. However, the phonon-assisted conductance of chiral CNTs is around seven times smaller than the electronic conductance due to the large momentum needed for momentum relaxation. Furthermore, we address the dependence of junction conductance on the angle between the CNTs, the twist angle and sliding shift of the CNTs, the Fermi energy, and the applied bias voltage between CNTs. Our calculations perfectly match the experimentally measured temperature-dependent conductance using a single geometrical fitting parameter.