The Effects of Defects on Electron Transport in Metallic Single Wall Carbon Nanotubes

We report the transport behavior of an open-end metallic single wall carbon nanotube (SWCNT) with and without local structural defects using the non-equilibrium Green’s functions approach together with the density functional theory (DFT). The transmission spectra and the projected density of states for the devices such as SWCNT (3, 3), (4, 4), (5, 5) and (6, 6) with and without defects were compared. In all cases, we found that the Stone-Wales defect had an almost negligible impact on the electrical performance compared to the monovacancy defect of the single wall carbon nanotubes at the Fermilevel. The Current-Voltage (I-V) characteristics of the devices were studied using the generalized Landauer Buttiker formalism under low bias conditions. From our results, we concluded that our systems were suitable for use in various CNT based nano-electronic devices.