Electronic and transport properties of radially deformed double-walled carbon nanotube intramolecular junction

Abstract

The electronic and transport property of a radially deformed double-walled carbon nanotube (DWNT) intramolecular junction (IMJ) has been studied by the tight-binding (TB) model combined with the first-principle calculations. The geometrical structures of the DWNT IMJ have been first optimized in energy by the universal force field (UFF) method. It is found that when heavily squashed, the DWNT will become an insulator-coated metallic wire, and the conductance near the Fermi level has been significantly changed by the radial squash. Specially, several resonance conductance peaks appear at some energies in the conduction band of the squashed DWNT IMJ. Finally, we have also investigated the conductance variation due to change of the length of the central semiconductor in the squashed DWNT IMJ. Furthermore, a promising pure carbon nanoscale electronic device is proposed based on the DWNT IMJ.