Research Paper: Investigation of the Effect of Uniaxial Strain on the Electrical Transport Properties of Zigzag Carbon Nanotube Joints

Abstract

In this paper, the electron transport through a zigzag single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) junction consisting of zigzag SWCNT (central region) sandwiched between two semi-infinite metallic zigzag SWCNT leads to the presence of an applied uniaxial strain is numerically investigated. This study is based on a nearest-neighbor tight-binding approximation within the framework of a generalized Green’s function technique and relies on the Landauer-B¨utikker formalism. The results show that the electron transport properties of the system can be well controlled by modifying the uniaxial strain strength and length of the SWCNT junction. Besides, applying compressive strain is more effective than tensile strain in opening a band gap in the system. Furthermore, the current amplitude for the tensile strain is bigger than the compressive strain with the same absolute values of uniaxial strain strength. As the length of the intermediate region increases, the density of states in Fermi energy decreases, and the magnitude of the electron emission function in Fermi energy decreases to zero, leading to the transition of the metal to the semiconductor.

Keywords

• carbon nanotube junction
• electron transport
• uniaxial strain
• green’s function method