title: Chemical vapor detection using nonlinear electrical properties of carbon nanotube bundles.
abstract: We demonstrate the electrical transport behavior of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) upon exposure to organic analytes (namely ethanol, benzene, acetone and toluene). The resulting nonlinear current-voltage characteristics revealed a power law dependence of the differential conductivity on the applied bias voltage. Moreover, suppression of differential conductivity at zero bias is found to be dependent on different selective analytes. The power law exponent values have been monitored before, during and after exposure to the chemicals, which revealed a reversible change in the number of electron conducting channels. Therefore, the reduction in the number of conductive paths can be attributed to the interaction of the chemical analyte on the CNT surfaces, which causes a decrease in the differential conductivity of the CNT sample. These results demonstrate chemical selectivity of CNTs due to varying electronic interaction with different chemical analytes.
authors: Department of Instrumentation and Applied Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore-560012, India.
authors: Prarthana
authors: P
authors: Gowda
authors: Ashish
authors: A
authors: Suri
authors: Siva Kumar
authors: SK
authors: Reddy
authors: Abha
authors: A
authors: Misra