Effect of vacancy defect on electrical properties of chiral single-walled carbon nanotube under external electrical field

Ab initio calculations demonstrated that the energy gap modulation of a chiral carbon nanotube with mono-vacancy defect can be achieved by applying a transverse electric field. The bandstructure of this defective carbon nanotube varying due to the external electric field is distinctly different from those of the perfect nanotube and defective zigzag nanotube. This variation in bandstructure strongly depends on not only the chirality of the nanotube and also the applied direction of the transverse electric field. A mechanism is proposed to explain the response of the local energy gap between the valence band maximum state and the local gap state under external electric field. Several potential applications of these phenomena are discussed.     

Dependence of the electrical properties of defective single-walled carbon nanotubes on the vacancy density

The relationship between the electric properties and the vacancy density in single-walled carbon nanotubes has been investigated from first principles as well as the dependence of the influencing range of a vacancy in the nanotube on the nanotube chirality.Compared with the long-range interaction of the vacancies in a single-walled carbon nanotube with non-zero chiral angle,a much shorter interaction was found between vacancies in a zigzag single-walled carbon nanotube.In this study,we investigated the bandstructure fluctuations caused by the nanotube strain,which depends on both the vacancy density and the tube chirality.These theoretical results provide new insight to understand the relationship between the local deformation of a defective single-walled carbon nanotube and its measurable electronic properties.