Boron/nitrogen pairs Co-doping in metallic carbon nanotubes: a first-principle study

By using the first-principles calculations,the electronic structure and quantum transport properties of metallic carbon nanotubes with B/N pairs co-doping have been investigated.It is shown that the total energies of metallic carbon nanotubes are sensitive to the doping sites of the B/N pairs.The energy gaps of the doped metallic carbon nanotubes decrease with decreasing the concentration of the B/N pair not only along the tube axis but also around the tube.Moreover,the I-V characteristics and transmissions of the doped tubes are studied.Our results reveal that the conducting ability of the doped tube decreases with increasing the concentrations of the B/N pairs due to symmetry breaking of the system.This fact opens a new way to modulate band structures of metallic carbon nanotubes by doping B/N pair with suitable concentration and the novel characteristics are potentially useful in future applications.     

The calculation of energy gaps in small single-walled carbon nanotubes within a symmetry-adapted tight-binding model

This paper studies in detail the electronic properties of the semimetallic single-walled carbon nanotubes by applying the symmetry-adapted tight-binding model.It is found that the hybridization of π-σ states caused by the curvature produces an energy gap at the vicinity of the Fermi level.Such effects are obvious for the small zigzag and chiral single-walled carbon nanotubes.The energy gaps decrease as the diameters and the chiral angles of the tubes increase,while the top of the valence band and the bottom of the conduction band of armchair tubes cross at the Fermi level.The numeral results agree well with the experimental results.     

Effects of Relative Orientation of Molecules on Electron Transport in Molecular Devices

Effects of relative orientation of the molecules on electron transport in molecular devices are studied by the non-equilibrium Green function method based on density functional theory. In particular, two molecular devices with planar Au7 and Ag3 clusters sandwiched between the Al（100） electrodes axe studied. In each device, two typical configurations with the clusters parallel and vertical to the electrodes are considered. It is found that the relative orientation affects the transport properties of these two devices completely differently. In the Al（100）- Au7-Al（100） device, the conductance and the current of the parallel configuration are much larger than those in the vertical configuration, while in the Al（100）-Ag3-Al（100） device, an opposite conclusion is obtained.     

Charge and spin-dependent thermal efficiency of polythiophene molecular junction in presence of dephasing

The charge and spin-dependent thermoelectric properties of different lengths of polythiophene in a molecular junction are investigated using the B ¨uttiker probe method within Green function formalism in linear response regime. The coupling of the molecular chain to three-dimensional ferromagnetic electrodes is described by a tight-binding model for both parallel and antiparallel spin configurations. The decrease of height of transmission probability peaks and thermoelectric coefficients are observed in the presence of the B ¨uttiker probes. The reduction is more intensive in the strong dephased chains.Results show that the spin magnetothermopower is bigger than the charge magnetothermopower due to the larger difference between the spin thermopowers with respect to the charge ones. In addition, we observed that the kind of carriers participating in the thermoelectric transport depends on the number of the thiophene rings.     

Electronic Transport in Molecular Junction Based on C20 Cages

Choosing closed-ended armchair （5, 5） single-wall carbon nanotubes （CCNTs） as electrodes, we investigate the electron transport properties across an all-carbon molecular junction consisting of C20 molecules suspended between two semi-infinite carbon nanotubes. It is shown that the conductances are quite sensitive to the number of C20 molecules between electrodes for both configuration CF1 and double-bonded models： the conductances of C20 dimers are markedly smaller than those of monomers. The physics is that incident electrons easily pass the C20 molecules and are predominantly scattered at the C20-C20 junctions. Moreover, we study the doping effect of such molecular junction by doping nitrogen atoms substitutionally. The bonding property of the molecular junction with configuration CF1 has been analysed by calculating the Mulliken atomic charges. Our results have revealed that the C atoms in N-doped junctions are more ionic than those in pure-carbon ones, leading to the fact that N-doped junctions have relatively large conductance.     

Electronic transport of Lorentz plasma with collision and magnetic field effects

The electronic transverse transport of Lorentz plasma with collision and magnetic field effects is studied by solving the Boltzmann equation for different electron density distributions. For the Maxwellian distribution, it is shown that transport coefficients decrease as ? increases, ? is the ratio of an electron's magneto-cyclotron frequency to plasma collision frequency. It means that the electrons are possible to be highly collimated by a strong magnetic field. For the quasimonoenergetic distribution with different widths, it is found that the transport coefficients decrease greatly as εˉ decreases.In particular when the width approaches to zero the transverse transport coefficients are hardly affected by the magnetic field and the minimal one is obtained. Results imply that the strong magnetic field and quasi-monoenergetic distribution are both beneficial to reduce the electronic transverse transport. This study is also helpful to understand the relevant problems of plasma transport in the background of the inertial confinement fusion.     

Resonant tunneling through double-barrier structures on grapheneResonant tunneling through double-barrier structures on grapheneResonant tunneling through double-barrier structures on grapheneResonant tunneling through double-barrier structures on graphene

Quantum resonant tunneling behaviors of double-barrier structures on graphene are investigated under the tight- binding approximation. The Klein tunneling and resonant tunneling are demonstrated for the quasiparticles with energy close to the Dirac points. The Klein tunneling vanishes by increasing the height of the potential barriers to more than 300 meV. The Dirac transport properties continuously change to the Schr6dinger ones. It is found that the peaks of resonant tunneling approximate to the eigen-levels of graphene nanoribbons under appropriate boundary conditions. A comparison between the zigzag- and armchair-edge barriers is given.     

Resonant tunneling through double-barrier structures on graphene

Quantum resonant tunneling behaviors of double-barrier structures on graphene are investigated under the tightbinding approximation. The Klein tunneling and resonant tunneling are demonstrated for the quasiparticles with energy close to the Dirac points. The Klein tunneling vanishes by increasing the height of the potential barriers to more than 300 meV. The Dirac transport properties continuously change to the Schro¨dinger ones. It is found that the peaks of resonant tunneling approximate to the eigen-levels of graphene nanoribbons under appropriate boundary conditions. A comparison between the zigzag- and armchair-edge barriers is given.     

Effects of doping, Stone Wales and vacancy defects on thermal conductivity of single-wall carbon nanotubes

The thermal conductivity of carbon nanotubes with certain defects (doping, Stone-Wales, and vacancy) is investigated by using the non-equilibrium molecular dynamics method. The defective carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are compared with perfect tubes. The influences of type and concentration of the defect, length, diameter, and chirality of the tube, and the ambient temperature are taken into consideration. It is demonstrated that defects result in a dramatic reduction of thermal conductivity. Doping and Stone-Wales (SW) defects have greater effect on armchair tubes, while vacancy affects the zigzag ones more. Thermal conductivity of the nanotubes increases, reaches a peak, and then decreases with increasing temperature. The temperature at which the thermal conductivity peak occurs is dependent on the defect type. Different from SW or vacancy tubes, doped tubes are similar to the perfect ones with a sharp peak at the same temperature. Thermal conductivity goes up when the tube length grows or diameter declines. It seems that the length of thermal conductivity convergence for SW tubes is much shorter than perfect or vacancy ones. The SW or vacancy tubes are less sensitive to the diameter change, compared with perfect ones.     

Magnetic properties of bulk polycrystalline Pr1-x Ndx（x=0,0.8）FeB permanent magnets

For spin reorientation （SRT）, the applications of sintering NdFeB permanent magnets are limited at low temperature. The sintering PrFeB permanent magnet （PM） presents no SRT and shows excellent magnetic properties at low temperature. The magnetic properties of bulk polycrystalline sintering Prl-xNdxFeB （x = 0 and 0.8 correspond to P42H and N50M respectively） are studied in this paper. The results show that magnetic properties and stability of N50M are better than those of 42H at room temperature. With the decrease of temperature, the parameters ofBr, Hcb, and Hci of P42H present a nearly linear increasing trend; Br and Hcb of N50M first increase and then decline, Hci presents an increasing trend. At 77 K, Br, Hci, and Jr of P42H are increased by 18.7%, 308%, and 17.1% respectively over than those at 300 K; at 120 K, Br, Hci, and Jr of N50M are increased by about 16.19%, 245%, and 12.6% respectively over than those at 300 K. The magnetic properties of P42H are better than those of N50M at low temperature. The sintering PrFeB is the preferred PM in various low-temperature devices.     

Electronic transport properties of single-wall boron nanotubes

Electronic transport properties of single-wall boron nanotube(BNT) with different chiralities, diameters, some of which are encapsulated with silicon, germanium, and boron nanowires are theoretically studied. The results indicate that the zigzag(3, 3) BNT has more electronic transmission channels than the armchair(5, 0) BNT because of its unique structure distortion. Nanowires encapsulated in the BNT can enhance the conductance of the BNT to some extent by providing a significant electronic transmission channel to the BNT. The effect of the structure of nanowires and the diameter of BNTs on the transport properties has also been discussed. The results of this paper can enrich the knowledge of the electron transport of the BNT and provide theoretical guidance for subsequent experimental study.     

AC losses in circular arrangements of parallel superconducting tapes

The DC and AC properties of superconducting tapes connected in parallel and arranged in a single closed layer on two tubes (corresponding to power cable conductor models with infinite pitch) with different diameters are compared. We find that the DC properties, i.e., the critical currents of the two arrangements, scale with the number of tapes and hence appear to be independent of the diameter. However, the AC loss per tape (for a given current per tape) appears to decrease with increasing diameter of the circular arrangement. Compared to a model for the AC loss in a continuous superconducting layer (Monoblock model) the measured values are about half an order of magnitude higher than expected for the small diameter arrangement. When compared to the AC loss calculated for N individual superconducting tapes using a well known model (Norris elliptical) the difference is slightly smaller.     

The spin-dependent electronic transport properties of M(dcdmp)2 (M = Cu,Au, Co,Ni) molecular devices based on zigzag graphene nanoribbon electrodes

The spin-dependent electronic transport properties of M(dcdmp)₂ (M = Cu, Au, Co, Ni; dcdmp = 2,3-dicyano-5,6-dimercaptopyrazyne) molecular devices based on zigzag graphene nanoribbon (ZGNR) electrodes were investigated by density functional theory combined nonequilibrium Green's function method (DFT-NEGF). Our results show that the spin-dependent transport properties of the M(dcdmp)₂ molecular devices can be controlled by the spin configurations of the ZGNR electrodes, and the central 3d-transition metal atom can introduce a larger magnetism than that of the nonferrous metal one. Moreover, the perfect spin filtering effect, negative differential resistance, rectifying effect and magnetic resistance phenomena can be observed in our proposed M(dcdmp)₂ molecular devices.     

Ab initio study of dielectric function of C-substituted single walled boron nanotubes

We report dielectric function related optical properties namely dielectric constant, static dielectric constant, and absorption coefficients of C-substituted hexagonal boron nanotubes. The optical properties were computed for parallel and perpendicular polarized light in the framework of density functional theory. In this regard, three models of BNTs namely armchair (3,3), zigzag (5,0), and chiral (4,2) have been undertaken for probing the effect of carbon impurity. Our calculations show high dielectric constant of armchair and chiral BNTs for parallel polarized light and magnitude becomes smaller for higher impurity concentration, while zigzag BNT exhibits reverse trend for high impurity concentration. For perpendicular polarized light, the magnitude of dielectric constant ε ₁(ω) is decreased and shifts at higher frequencies. The absorption is revealed highest for armchair followed by zigzag and chiral BNTs independent of impurity concentration. The intensity of absorption gets weaken for higher concentration. The chiral BNTs show smaller but uniform absorption in smaller frequency range results in uniform field emission. These findings are also compared with available experimental and theoretical results. These metallic nanotubes are promising candidate as interconnects for nanodevices as well as field emission devices.     

Raman scattering of the MoS2 and WS2 single nanotubes

We report here the results of the first resonance Raman study on single MoS₂ and WS₂ nanotubes and microtubes synthesized by chemical transport reaction. These multiwall tubes represent the longest known inorganic nanotubes grown up to several millimetre lengths with diameters ranging from less than ten nanometers to several micrometers. The nanotubes grown at nearly equilibrium conditions contain extremely low density of structural defects. The selected area diffraction on the thick-wall nanotubes revealing the rhombohedral (3R) stacking, otherwise stable at elevated pressure above 4 GPa, provides indirect evidence of the presence of strain incorporated into the nanotube wall. Results are compared with phonon spectra of plate-like crystals of the same compound. The observed up-shift of Raman peaks in the tubes spectra is explained by the presence of strain. Well preserved crystal structure of tubes is confirmed by comparison with phonon spectra of nanostructured materials from literature.     

Stability of carbon nanotubes: how small can they be?

Experimental evidence has been found for the existence of small single wall carbon nanotubes with diameters of 0.5 and 0.33 nm by high resolution transmission electron microscopy, and their mechanical stability was investigated using tight-binding molecular dynamics simulations. It is shown that, while the carbon tubes with diameters smaller than 0.4 nm are energetically less favorable than a graphene sheet, some of them are indeed mechanically stable at temperatures as high as 1100 degrees C. The 0.33 nm carbon tube observed is likely a (4, 0) tube and is indeed part of a compound nanotube system that forms perhaps the smallest metal-semiconductor-metal tubular junction yet synthesized.     

Effective interactions in molecular dynamics simulations of lysozyme solutions

On the basis of ab-initio calculations, we predict the effect of conformation and molecule-electrode distance on transport properties of asymmetric molecular junctions for different electrode materials M (M = Au, Ag, Cu, and Pt). The asymmetry in these junctions is created by connecting one end of the biphenyl molecule to conjugated double thiol (model A) and single thiol (model B) groups, while the other end to Cu atom. A variety of phenomena viz. rectification, negative differential resistance (NDR), switching has been observed that can be controlled by tailoring the interface state properties through molecular conformation and molecule-electrode distance for various M. These properties are further analyzed by calculating transmission spectra, molecular orbitals, and orbital energy. It is found that Cu electrode shows significantly enhanced rectifying performance with change in torsion angles, as well as with increase in molecule-electrode distances than Au and Ag electrodes. Moreover, Pt electrode manifests distinctive multifunctional behavior combining switch, diode, and NDR. Thus, the Pt electrode is suggested to be a good potential candidate for a novel multifunctional electronic device. Our findings are compared with available experimental and theoretical results.     

Study on the electronic transport properties of the C14 monocyclic ring: The first-principles calculations

The transport properties of C₁₄ monocyclic ring sandwiched between two Al(1 0 0) electrodes are investigated by first-principle calculations. The variation of the equilibrium conductance as the function of the separation distance between the molecule and the electrodes is studied. C₁₄ monocyclic ring shows metallic behavior according to the calculated equilibrium conductance. Electron transmission occurs through the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO). With gate-voltage applied, it is found that the positive and negative gate-voltages can bring very different effect on the variation of equilibrium conductance. We also calculate the effects of adsorbing other atoms on the carbon ring such as oxygen and sulfur atoms. The results indicate that adsorption of this kind of electron-accepting impurity will decrease the conductance of the system.