Negative Differential Resistance in Carbon Atomic Wire-Carbon Nanotube Junctions

Abstract

Negative differential resistance (NDR) was recently observed in carbon nanotube junctions just before breaking and hypothesized to arise from the formation of monatomic carbon wires in the junction. Motivated by these results, a first-principles scattering-state approach, based on density functional theory, is used to study the transport properties of carbon chains covalently connecting metallic carbon nanotube leads at finite bias. The I- V characteristics of short carbon chains are predicted to exhibit even-odd behavior, and NDR is found for both even and odd chain junctions in our calculations.

Progressive structural and electronic properties of nano-structured carbon atomic chains

“…The alternating distribution of bond length of short chains is in good agreement with other reported theoretical values. 14,16,17,19,31,32 The total electronic charge density distribution (Fig. 1) is consistent with the bond length distribution along the chain.…”

Mechano-switching devices from carbon wire-carbon nanotube junctions

“…By using the nonequilibrium Green's function (NEGF) approach, Khoo et. al 17 observed negative differential resistance in the carbon wire-capped CNT junction, bonded through sp 3 bond. Recently, the carbon wire connected to graphene sheets 18,19 (representing infinite radii of CNT) have been theoretically studied, revealing different electronic functions such as molecular switches 20 , molecular rectifiers 21 , and molecular spintronics devices 22 .…”

Single-wall-carbon-nanotube/single-carbon-chain molecular junctions

“…2,3 Several theoretical works have explored the transport properties of a SCC. [4][5][6][7][8][9][10] Infinite SCCs are semiconducting due to Peierls distortion. 11 However, short SCCs are usually treated as metallic in the literature.…”