Conductance spikes in single-walled carbon nanotube field-effect transistor

Abstract

Nanoscale field-effect transistor (FET) has been fabricated from single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNTs). At ∼5 K, the transistor shows pronounced field effect. Most interestingly, reproducible spikes are observed in the channel conductance as a function of the gate voltage. These conductance spikes are attributed to van Hove singularities in the electronic density of states in the carbon nanotubes. Based on the observation of these conductance spikes, a mechanism is proposed for the charge transport in CNT FETs.