Electronic transport in intermediate sized carbon nanotubes

M. Ahlskog, O. Herranen, A. Johansson, J. Leppäniemi, and D. Mtsuko

Phys. Rev. B 79, 155408 – Published 3 April 2009

Abstract

We have studied systematically basic transport properties of multiwalled carbon nanotubes in a relatively unexplored diameter range, corresponding to tubes just slightly larger than single- or double-walled tubes to tubes up to 17 nm in diameter. We find in all the smaller tubes a gap in the transport data which increases with decreasing tube diameter. Within the gap region of several tubes, negative differential resistance was observed at small or moderate biases and at bias values that scaled inversely with the tube diameter. For this latter type of behavior of the conductance, we tentatively propose interlayer resonant tunneling as the cause.