Current carrying capacity of carbon nanotubes

Abstract

The current carrying capacity of ballistic electrons in carbon nanotubes that are coupled to ideal contacts is analyzed. At small applied voltages, where electrons are injected only into crossing subbands, the differential conductance is $4e^2/h$. At applied voltages larger than $\Delta E_{NC}/2e$ ($\Delta E_{NC}$ is the energy level spacing of first non crossing subbands), electrons are injected into non crossing subbands. The contribution of these electrons to current is determined by the competing processes of Bragg reflection and Zener type inter subband tunneling. In small diameter nanotubes, Bragg reflection dominates, and the maximum differential conductance is comparable to $4e^2/h$. Inter subband Zener tunneling can be non negligible as the nanotube diameter increases because $\Delta E_{NC}$ is inversely proportional to the diameter. As a result, with increasing nanotube diameter, the differential conductance becomes larger than $4e^2/h$, though not comparable to the large number of subbands into which electrons are injected from the contacts. These results may be relevant to recent experiments in large diameter multi-wall nanotubes that observed conductances larger than $4e^2/h$.