Which nanowire couples better electrically to a metal contact: armchair or zigzag nanotube?

The fundamental question of how chirality affects the electronic coupling of a nanotube to metal contacts is important for tile application of nanotubes as nanowires. We show that metallic-zigzag nanotubes are superior to armchair nanotubes as nanowires, by modeling the metal-nanotube interfacc. More specifically, we show that as a function of coupling strength, the total electron transmission of armchair nanotubes increases and tends to be pinned close to unity for a metal with Fermi wave vector close to that of gold. In contrast, the transmission probability of zigzag nanotubes increases to the mmximum possible value of two. The origi, of these effects lies in the details of the wave fimction, which is explained. 1-1 https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20010095423 2017-09-13T20:16:02+00:00Z