Quantum Calculations of Carbon Nanotube Charging and Capacitance

Abstract

ABSTRACTAlthough it has long been known that the classical notions of capacitance are altered at the nanoscale, few first principles calculations of these properties exist for real material systems. With a recently developed ab initio formalism, which combines nonequilibrium Greens function techniques with real-space density functional calculations, we have investigated charging effects for carbon nanotube systems, which are described by the capacitance coefficients. Specifically, the capacitance matrix of two nested nanotube armchair nanotubes, the insertion of one nanotube into another, and the properties of a nanotube acting as a probe over a flat aluminum surface were considered.