Carbon Nanotubes with Kinks

(a, b) Atomic force microscope images of nanotube junction devices with a single kink of 36° and 41° respectively. The gold electrodes are 250-nm wide. Nanotubes are deposited on top of the electrodes by spin coating of a drop of SWNT suspension in dichloroethane. (c) A kink junction constructed between an 'armchair' tube and a 'zigzag' tube using pentagon and heptagon defects.

Current-voltage characteristics of (a) across the kink at 100 K. The upper segment follows Ohm's Law and is metallic. The kink behaves like a rectifying diode, consistent with a metal-semiconductor junction.

Zhen Yao, Henk W. Ch. Postma, Leon Balents, Cees Dekker, "Carbon nanotube intramolecular junctions," Nature, 402, 274-276 (1999).