Abstract
Electrical transport properties of double-walled carbon nanotubes (DWNTs) are modulated by encapsulating the azafullerene C59N which is synthesized via a plasma ion-irradiation method. The encapsulation of C59N molecules inside DWNTs has been confirmed by both transmission electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy. The pristine DWNTs with outer diameter 4 - 5 nm are found to exhibit an ambipolar semiconducting behavior due to their small band gap. It is found that C60 fullerene encapsulated DWNTs exhibit a unipolar p-type semiconducting behavior. By comparison, C59N encapsulated DWNTs display an n-type semiconducting behavior. Our findings demonstrate that C59N operates as an electron donor compared with the acceptor behavior of C60, which is further clarified by photoelectron emission spectroscopy.
Highlights
Double-walled carbon nanotubes (DWNTs) serving as nanoelectrical materials has received extensive attentions owing to their great potential applications [1,2]
A very weak peak for the Ag (2) mode observed in C59N encapsulated double-walled carbon nanotubes (DWNTs) compared with that observed for C60 encapsulated DWNTs may possibly be explained in terms of their different electronic structure
Unipolar n-type DWNT-field-effect transistor (FET) can be obtained by the C59N-encapsulation, as shown in Figure 4(a), where the characteristics of IDS-VG measured at different VDS ranging from 0 to 0.1 V in steps of 0.02 V indicate clearly that the FET device exhibits an excellent n-type semiconducting behavior, and no amibipolar behavior is found due to the strong electron-donating property of C59N
Summary
Double-walled carbon nanotubes (DWNTs) serving as nanoelectrical materials has received extensive attentions owing to their great potential applications [1,2]. DWNTs are interesting as material in engineering various kinds of nanoelectronic devices. Most of previous experiments to date focus on the empty DWNTs which initially show an ambipolar or a p-type behavior when fabricated as the channels of field-effect transistor (FET) devices [3,4,5]. The extensive research using different kinds of nanotubes with controllable electronic properties to construct nanoelectronic devices is extremely important for the progress in this field. We have investigated the transport properties of FET devices fabricated based on DWNTs which are modulated with the C59N azafullerene for the first time. After the C59N encapsulation, DWNTs can exhibit a unipolar n-type semiconducting behavior in contrast to the p-type behavior of C60 encapsulated DWNTs, indicating that the electronic structure of DWNTs is strongly modified upon the insertion of C59N azafullerene in contrast to the case of pristine DWNTs and C60 encapsulated DWNTs
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