Effect of elastic disorder on single-electron transport through a buckled nanotube

Abstract

We study transport properties of a single electron transistor based on elastic nanotube. Assuming that an external compressive force is applied to the nanotube, we focus on the vicinity of the Euler buckling instability. We demonstrate that in this regime the transport through the transistor is extremely sensitive to elastic disorder. In particular, built-in curvature (random or regular) leads to the “elastic curvature blockade”: appearance of threshold bias voltage in the I-V curve which can be larger than the Coulomb-blockade-induced one. In the case of a random curvature, an additional plateau in the dependence of the average current on a bias voltage appears.