Electrical conductance of carbon nanotubes with misaligned ends

Abstract

When in a manufacturing processes a straight carbon nanotube is placed on a substrate, e.g. production of transistors, its two ends are often misaligned. Here we investigate the effects of MWCNTs’ outer diameter and chirality on the change in conductance due to misalignment of the two ends. The length of the studied MWCNTs was 120 nm while the diameters ranged between 4 and 7 nm. A mixed finite element-tight-binding approach was carefully designed to realize orders-of-magnitude reduction in computational time in calculating the deformation-induced changes in the electrical transport properties of the nanotubes. Numerical results suggest that armchair MWCNTs of small diameter should work better if used as conductors, while zig-zag MWCNTs of big diameter are more suitable for building sensors.