No Arabic abstract
Random networks of carbon nanotubes and metallic nanowires have shown to be very useful in the production of transparent, conducting films. The electronic transport on the film depends considerably on the network properties, and on the inter-wire coupling. Here we present a simple, computationally efficient method for the calculation of conductance on random nanostructured networks. The method is implemented on metallic nanowire networks, which are described within a single-orbital tight binding Hamiltonian, and the conductance is calculated with the Kubo formula. We show how the network conductance depends on the average number of connections per wire, and on the number of wires connected to the electrodes. We also show the effect of the inter-/intra-wire hopping ratio on the conductance through the network. Furthermore, we argue that this type of calculation is easily extendable to account for the upper conductivity of realistic films spanned by tunneling networks. When compared to experimental measurements, this quantity provides a clear indication of how much room is available for improving the film conductivity.
An efficient order$-N$ real-space Kubo approach is developed for the calculation of the thermal conductivity of complex disordered materials. The method, which is based on the Chebyshev polynomial expansion of the time evolution operator and the Lanczos tridiagonalization scheme, efficiently treats the propagation of phonon wave-packets in real-space and the phonon diffusion coefficients. The mean free paths and the thermal conductance can be determined from the diffusion coefficients. These quantities can be extracted simultaneously for all frequencies, which is another advantage in comparison with the Greens function based approaches. Additionally, multiple scattering phenomena can be followed through the time dependence of the diffusion coefficient deep into the diffusive regime, and the onset of weak or strong phonon localization could possibly be revealed at low temperatures for thermal insulators. The accuracy of our computational scheme is demonstrated by comparing the calculated phonon mean free paths in isotope-disordered carbon nanotubes with Landauer simulations and analytical results. Then, the upscalibility of the method is illustrated by exploring the phonon mean free paths and the thermal conductance features of edge disordered graphene nanoribbons having widths of $sim$20 nanometers and lengths as long as a micrometer, which are beyond the reach of other numerical techniques. It is shown that, the phonon mean free paths of armchair nanoribbons are smaller than those of zigzag nanoribbons for the frequency range which dominate the thermal conductance at low temperatures. This computational strategy is applicable to higher dimensional systems, as well as to a wide range of materials.
We study the conductance of disordered graphene superlattices with short-range structural correlations. The system consists of electron- and hole-doped graphenes of various thicknesses, which fluctuate randomly around their mean value. The effect of the randomness on the probability of transmission through the system of various sizes is studied. We show that in a disordered superlattice the quasiparticle that approaches the barrier interface almost perpendicularly transmits through the system. The conductivity of the finite-size system is computed and shown that the conductance vanishes when the sample size becomes very large, whereas for some specific structures the conductance tends to a nonzero value in the thermodynamics limit.
We present a general theory of current deviations in straight current carrying wires with random imperfections, which quantitatively explains the recent observations of organized patterns of magnetic field corrugations above micron-scale evaporated wires. These patterns originate from the most efficient electron scattering by Fourier components of the wire imperfections with wavefronts along the $pm 45^{circ}$ direction. We show that long range effects of surface or bulk corrugations are suppressed for narrow wires or wires having an electrically anisotropic resistivity.
Force and conductance were simultaneously measured during the formation of Cu-C60 and C60-C60 contacts using a combined cryogenic scanning tunneling and atomic force microscope. The contact geometry was controlled with submolecular resolution. The maximal attractive forces measured for the two types of junctions were found to differ significantly. We show that the previously reported values of the contact conductance correspond to the junction being under maximal tensile stress.
We show that transport and thermodynamic properties of emph{singly-connected} disordered conductors exhibit quantum Aharonov - Bohm oscillations with the total magnetic flux through the system. The oscillations are associated with the interference contribution from a special class of electron trajectories confined to the surface of the sample.