Metal-to-semiconductor transition in squashed armchair carbon nanotubes.
We investigate electronic transport properties of the squashed armchair carbon nanotubes, using tight-binding molecular dynamics and the Green's function method. We demonstrate a metal-to-semiconductor transition while squashing the nanotubes and a general mechanism for such a transition. It is the distinction of the two sublattices in the nanotube that opens an energy gap near the Fermi energy. We show that the transition has to be achieved by a combined effect of breaking of mirror symmetry and bond formation between the flattened faces in the squashed nanotubes.
Lu
Jun-Qiang
JQ
Center for Advanced Study, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, People's Republic of China.
Wu
Jian
J
Duan
Wenhui
W
Liu
Feng
F
Zhu
Bang-Fen
BF
Gu
Bing-Lin
BL