corner
corner
APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 95 » Issue 21
< Previous Article | Next Article >

Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 216602 (2005) [4 pages]

Electrical Switching in Metallic Carbon Nanotubes

Download: PDF (632 kB) Buy this article Export: BibTeX or EndNote (RIS)

Young-Woo Son1,2, Jisoon Ihm2,3, Marvin L. Cohen1, Steven G. Louie1, and Hyoung Joon Choi4,*
1Department of Physics, University of California at Berkeley and Materials Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
2School of Physics, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-742, Korea
3Department of Physics, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 440-746, Korea
4School of Computational Sciences, Korea Institute for Advanced Study, Seoul 130-722, Korea, and Institute of Physics and Applied Physics, Yonsei University, Seoul 120-749, Korea

Received 26 April 2005; published 17 November 2005

We present first-principles calculations of quantum transport which show that the resistance of metallic carbon nanotubes can be changed dramatically with homogeneous transverse electric fields if the nanotubes have impurities or defects. The change of the resistance is predicted to range over more than 2 orders of magnitude with experimentally attainable electric fields. This novel property has its origin that backscattering of conduction electrons by impurities or defects in the nanotubes is strongly dependent on the strength and/or direction of the applied electric fields. We expect this property to open a path to new device applications of metallic carbon nanotubes.

© 2005 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.95.216602
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.95.216602
PACS:
72.80.Rj, 73.63.Fg, 81.05.Tp

*Electronic address: h.j.choi@yonsei.ac.kr

 
< Previous Article | Next Article >