Influence of Structural Defects on the Electronic Properties of Carbon Nanotubes Examined by Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy

Abstract

AbstractThe electronic properties of carbon nanotubes are quite often drastically affected by the presence of defects that can develop during nanotube growth, processing or characterization too. Some of these defects such as pentagon-heptagon rings, substitutional impurities, vacancies and dislocations are of topological nature, and can sometimes create on-tube intramolecular junctions, as found by previous scanning tunnelling microscopy studies.Our recent STM experiments reveal for the first time a much more complicated junction structure, a hybrid single-walled carbon nanotube consisting of a distinct coiled structure located between two straight segments, each of different helicity. We characterise the hybrid junction at the atomic level and describe its electronic behaviour that has important implications in the practical design of functional components for nanoelectronic applications.