Effects of Disorder and Momentum Relaxation on the Intertube Transport of Incommensurate Carbon Nanotube Ropes and Multiwall Nanotubes

@misc{citeulike:697972, abstract = {We study theoretically the electrical transport between aligned carbon nanotubes in nanotube ropes, and between shells in multiwall carbon nanotubes. We focus on transport between two metallic nanotubes (or shells) of different chiralities with mismatched Fermi momenta and incommensurate periodicities. We perform numerical calculations of the transport properties of such systems within a tight-binding formalism. For clean (disorder-free) nanotubes the intertube transport is strongly suppressed as a result of momentum conservation. For clean nanotubes, the intertube transport is typically dominated by the loss of momentum conservation at the contacts. We discuss in detail the effects of disorder, which also breaks momentum conservation, and calculate the effects of localised scatterers of various types. We show that physically relevant disorder potentials lead to very dramatic enhancements of the intertube conductance. We show that recent experimental measurements of the intershell transport in multiwall nanotubes are consistent with our theoretical results for a model of short-ranged correlated disorder.}, author = {Tunney, M. A. and Cooper, N. R. }, citeulike-article-id = {697972}, eprint = {cond-mat/0606410}, keywords = {incommensurate, nanotube, transport}, month = {Jun}, posted-at = {2006-06-16 11:02:19}, priority = {2}, title = {Effects of Disorder and Momentum Relaxation on the Intertube Transport of Incommensurate Carbon Nanotube Ropes and Multiwall Nanotubes}, url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0606410}, year = {2006} }

TY - ELEC ID - citeulike:697972 L3 - citeulike-article-id:697972 TI - Effects of Disorder and Momentum Relaxation on the Intertube Transport of Incommensurate Carbon Nanotube Ropes and Multiwall Nanotubes N2 - We study theoretically the electrical transport between aligned carbon nanotubes in nanotube ropes, and between shells in multiwall carbon nanotubes. We focus on transport between two metallic nanotubes (or shells) of different chiralities with mismatched Fermi momenta and incommensurate periodicities. We perform numerical calculations of the transport properties of such systems within a tight-binding formalism. For clean (disorder-free) nanotubes the intertube transport is strongly suppressed as a result of momentum conservation. For clean nanotubes, the intertube transport is typically dominated by the loss of momentum conservation at the contacts. We discuss in detail the effects of disorder, which also breaks momentum conservation, and calculate the effects of localised scatterers of various types. We show that physically relevant disorder potentials lead to very dramatic enhancements of the intertube conductance. We show that recent experimental measurements of the intershell transport in multiwall nanotubes are consistent with our theoretical results for a model of short-ranged correlated disorder. KW - incommensurate KW - nanotube KW - transport AU - Tunney, MA AU - Cooper, NR PY - 2006/Jun/15/ UR - http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0606410 ER -