Metal--semiconductor transition in single-walled carbon nanotubes induced by low-energy electron irradiation.

Vijayaraghavan, Aravind; Kanzaki, Kenichi; Suzuki, Saturo; Kobayashi, Yoshihiro; Inokawa, Hiroshi; Ono, Yukinori; Kar, Swastik; Ajayan, Pulickel M · Nano Lett · 2005

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

We report the effect of low-energy (1 keV) electron beam irradiation on gated, three-terminal devices constructed from metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes. Pristine devices, which exhibited negligible gate voltage response at room temperature and metallic single-electron transistor characteristics at low temperatures, when exposed to an electron beam, exhibited ambipolar field effect transistor (room temperature) and single-electron transistor (low temperature) characteristics. This metal-semiconductor transition is attributed to inhomogeneous electric fields arising from charging during electron irradiation.

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