Interface study of metal electrode and semiconducting carbon nanotubes: Effects of electrode atomic species

Presented herein are the first-principle calculations of the transport and other pertinent electronic properties of metal contacted semiconducting carbon nanotubes (CNTs). The investigation is focused on elucidating access resistance as a function of the work function difference and the chemical nature of the metal atomic species. Our results show that, for simple end-contact geometries, the Fermi level position within the gap differs between palladium-contacted CNTs and gold-contacted CNTs. This is interesting since both of these metals possess similar work functions. The role of the metal-CNT coupling is examined in light of the resulting I-V behavior of the system.