Contact phenomena in carbon nanotubes

Abstract

Poor screening of the long-range Coulomb interaction in one-dimensional carbon nanotubes results in a peculiar picture of contact phenomena. Being brought to a contact with a metal, conducting nanotube accumulates electric charge whose density decays slowly with the distance from the contact. This should be contrasted to a conventional metal-metal contact where the charge density decreases exponentially at atomic distances. Implications for experiments are discussed.