About cookies on this site Our websites require some cookies to function properly (required). In addition, other cookies may be used with your consent to analyze site usage, improve the user experience and for advertising. For more information, please review your options. By visiting our website, you agree to our processing of information as described in IBM’sprivacy statement. To provide a smooth navigation, your cookie preferences will be shared across the IBM web domains listed here.
Publication
Applied Physics Letters
Paper
Contact resistance of carbon nanotubes
Abstract
There is a pathological contact resistance within an idealized picture of an armchair nanotubes (NT) and free-electron metal. This problem can be eliminated by using a metal with a sufficiently large Fermi wave vector, by introducing scattering in the NT, or by contacting the end of the NT. Whether this is really a crucial factor in NT contact resistance depends on the quantitative magnitudes of various scattering mechanisms, which are difficult to estimate. The decay of electron wave functions across the van der Waals spacing between metal and NT may also be an important factor.