(Invited) One-Dimensional Features of Electron Transport in Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Thin Films
Authors: Chiashi Shohei 
Published: July 2022

Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) are excellent conductors with high flexibility, high thermal conductivity, and high transparency. Flexible and transparent SWCNT thin films and SWCNT yarns with high mechanical strength have been produced, and in particular, the improvement of electrical conduction characteristics of these SWCNT aggregates has been studied intensively. The electrical conductivity of SWCNT aggregates have improved year by year, but it is worse than those of a single SWCNT, so far. SWCNT aggregates contain complex structures such as SWCNTs with different chirality structures, many junctions, and bundle structures, which could be the cause of deterioration of transport characteristics, however, it has not been clarified.

In this study, we focused on low-density SWCNT thin films and investigated their electron transport characteristics. The low-density SWCNT thin film has a simple network structure since the network consists of the bundles of a small number of long SWCNTs. Here, the magnetic field dependence, temperature dependence, and gate voltage dependence of the electrical conductivity were measured and analyzed.

The SWCNT thin films were synthesized by a floating catalyst CVD method, and they were transparent (90%T), and electrically conductive [1]. The thin film consisted of a network structure of bundles, which consisted of about 10 SWCNTs. The films were mixtures with metallic and semiconducting SWCNTs. The electrical resistivity of the SWCNT thin film was measured by the four-point probes method, and the gate voltage (Vg) was applied using an ionic liquid. The direction of the magnetic field was perpendicular to the thin film surface. The areal density of SWCNT length was estimated from the light absorption cross-section of the SWCNT thin films, and then the electrical resistivity was calculated from the actual volume of SWCNTs excluding the void space.

SWCNTs generally show p-type characteristics in the atmosphere in the back-gate configuration due to the dope effects of oxygen and/or water molecules. However, the Vg dependence of the electrical resistivity of the thin film showed a bipolar behavior under the ionic liquid gate. The change ratio of the resistivity in the Vg range (-3 to +3 V) was more than 10, which suggested that not only did the non-conductive semiconducting SWCNT become conductive, but the number of percolation paths increased accordingly. Raman scattering spectroscopy also exhibited that semi-conducting SWCNTs were heavily doped by the ionic liquid gating. The electrical resistivity decreased down to approximately 20 μΩcm at room temperature with Vg=-3 V. The temperature dependence in the temperature range (30-110 K) with Vg=-3 V was explained by the variable range hopping (VRH) model with the dimensionality of one, although the SWCNT thin films are two-dimensional structures. Hall resistivity of the thin film slightly changed at different Vg, however, it was almost negligible. It is probably because most of the SWCNT thin films were linear bundle parts, and the bundle diameter was a few nm, which is much smaller than the cyclotron radius [2]. Additionally, the thermoelectric measurement was performed. The Vg dependence of thermoelectrical conductivity showed one-dimensional characteristics [3].

These measurements showed one-dimensional features of electron transport properties of SWCNT thin films. A single SWCNT can be regarded as a one-dimensional system, but in general, one-dimensional features do not appear in the electron transport of SWCNTs in the form of thin films or yarns. In this study, probably because the thin film has a very low density (light transmittance 90% T) and forms a network consisting of a thin bundle structure, the one-dimensional features clearly appeared. The one-dimensionality is one of the origins of the excellent properties of SWCNTs and it is could be a useful index for improving electrical conductivity.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank H. Date (Univ. of Tokyo) for the experiments and measurements, Prof. T. Fujii (Univ. of Tokyo) for the measurements, and Prof. E. I. Kauppinen for the sample supply.

[1] A.G. Nasibulin, et al., ACS Nano, 5 (2011) 3214.

[2] M. L. Roukes, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 59 (1987) 3011.

[3] Y. Ichinose, et al., Phys. Rev. Mater., 5 (2021) 025404.