Flow-induced voltage and current generation in carbon nanotubes

Abstract

New experimental results, and a plausible theoretical understanding thereof, are presented for the flow-induced currents and voltages observed in single-walled carbon nanotube samples. In our experiments, the electrical response was found to be strongly sublinear -- nearly logarithmic -- in the flow speed over a wide range, and its direction could be controlled by an electrochemical biasing of the nanotubes. These experimental findings are inconsistent with the conventional idea of a streaming potential as the efficient cause. Here we present a new, physically appealing, Langevin-equation based treatment of the nanotube charge carriers, assumed to be moving under coulombic forcing by the correlated ionic fluctuations, advected by the liquid in flow. The resulting 'Doppler-shifted' force-force correlation, as seen by the charge carriers drifting in the nanotube, is shown to give a strongly sublinear response, broadly in agreement with experiments.