No Arabic abstract
Using large-scale DFT calculations, we have investigated the structural and electronic properties of both armchair and zigzag graphdiyne nanotubes as a function of size. To provide insight in these properties, we present new detailed calculations of the structural relaxation energy, effective electron/hole mass, and size-scaling of the bandgap as a function of size and chirality using accurate screened-exchange DFT calculations. These calculations provide a systematic evaluation of the structural and electronic properties of the largest graphdiyne nanotubes to date - up to 1,296 atoms and 23,328 basis functions. Our calculations find that zigzag graphdiyne nanotubes (GDNTs) are structurally more stable compared to armchair GDNTs of the same size. Furthermore, these large-scale calculations allow us to present simple analytical formulae to guide future experimental efforts for estimating the fundamental bandgaps of these unique nanotubes as a function of chirality and diameter. While the bandgaps for both the armchair and zigzag GDNTs can be tuned as a function of size, the conductivity in each of these two different chiralities is markedly different. Zigzag GDNTs have wider valence and conduction bands and are expected to have a higher electron- and hole-mobility than their armchair counterparts.
Over many years, computational simulations based on Density Functional Theory (DFT) have been used extensively to study many different materials at the atomic scale. However, its application is restricted by system size, leaving a number of interesting systems without a high-accuracy quantum description. In this work, we calculate the electronic and structural properties of a graphene-metal system significantly larger than in previous plane-wave calculations with the same accuracy. For this task we use a localised basis set with the textsc{Conquest} code, both in their primitive, pseudo-atomic orbital form, and using a recent multi-site approach. This multi-site scheme allows us to maintain accuracy while saving computational time and memory requirements, even in our exemplar complex system of graphene grown on Rh(111) with and without intercalated atomic oxygen. This system offers a rich scenario that will serve as a benchmark, demonstrating that highly accurate simulations in cells with over 3000 atoms are feasible with modest computational resources.
We produce 120 um thick buckypapers from aligned carbon nanotubes. Transport characteristics evidence ohmic behavior in a wide temperature range, non linearity appearing in the current-voltage curves only close to 4.2 K. The temperature dependence of the conductance shows that transport is mostly due to thermal fluctuation induced tunneling, although to explain the whole temperature range from 4.2 K to 430 K a further linear contribution is necessary. The field emission properties are measured by means of a nanocontrolled metallic tip acting as collector electrode to access local information about buckypaper properties from areas as small as 1 um2. Emitted current up to 10-5A and turn-on field of about 140V/um are recorded. Long operation, stability and robustness of emitters have been probed by field emission intensity monitoring for more than 12 hours at pressure of 10-6 mbar. Finally, no tuning of the emitted current was observed for in plane applied currents in the buckypaper.
Through magnetic linear dichroism spectroscopy, the magnetic susceptibility anisotropy of metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes has been extracted and found to be 2-4 times greater than values for semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes. This large anisotropy is consistent with our calculations and can be understood in terms of large orbital paramagnetism of electrons in metallic nanotubes arising from the Aharonov-Bohm-phase-induced gap opening in a parallel field. We also compare our values with previous work for semiconducting nanotubes, which confirm a break from the prediction that the magnetic susceptibility anisotropy increases linearly with the diameter.
We have calculated the effects of structural distortions of armchair carbon nanotubes on their electrical transport properties. We found that the bending of the nanotubes decreases their transmission function in certain energy ranges and leads to an increased electrical resistance. Electronic structure calculations show that these energy ranges contain localized states with significant $sigma$-$pi$ hybridization resulting from the increased curvature produced by bending. Our calculations of the contact resistance show that the large contact resistances observed for SWNTs are likely due to the weak coupling of the NT to the metal in side bonded NT-metal configurations.
In carbon nanotubes, the most abundant defects, caused for example by irradiation or chemisorption treatments, are small perturbing clusters, i.e. bi-site defects, extending over both A and B sites. The relative positions of these perturbing clusters play a crucial role in determining the electronic properties of carbon nanotubes. Using bandstructure and electronic transport calculations, we find out that in the case of armchair metallic nanotubes a band gap opens up when the clusters fulfill a certain periodicity condition. This phenomenon might be used in future nanoelectronic devices in which certain regions of single metallic nanotubes could be turned to semiconducting ones. Although in this work we study specifically the effect of hydrogen adatom clusters, the phenomenon is general for different types of defects. Moreover, we study the influence of the length and randomness of the defected region on the electron transport through it.