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Many-body effects in electronic bandgaps of carbon nanotubes measured by scanning tunnelling spectroscopy

Nature Materials volume 9, pages 235–238 (2010)Cite this article

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Abstract

Single-walled carbon nanotubes provide an ideal system for studying the properties of one-dimensional (1D) materials, where strong electron–electron interactions are expected1. Optical measurements have recently reported the existence of excitons in semiconducting nanotubes, revealing the importance of many-body effects2,3,4. Surprisingly, pioneering electronic structure calculations5,6,7 and scanning tunnelling spectroscopy (STS) experiments8,9,10 report the same gap values as optical experiments. Here, an experimental STS study of the bandgap of single-walled semiconducting nanotubes, demonstrates a continuous transition from the gap reduced by the screening resulting from the metal substrate to the intrinsic gap dominated by many-body interactions. These results provide a deeper knowledge of many-body interactions in these 1D systems and a better understanding of their electronic properties, which is a prerequisite for any application of nanotubes in the ultimate device miniaturization for molecular electronics11,12, or spintronics13.

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Figure 1: STM/STS of a bundle of tubes on the Au(111) metallic surface.
Figure 2: Gap models as a function of nanotube diameters.
Figure 3: First E11s and second E22s sub-band energy separation as a function of the apparent height (ha) of the tubes.
Figure 4: Comparison of nanotube gap predicted or measured by different methods.

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Acknowledgements

This study has been supported by the European Contract STREP ‘BCN’ Nanotubes 30007654-OTP25763, by a grant from CNano IdF, by the SESAME project and by the ANR project ‘CEDONA’ of the PNANO programme (ANR-07-NANO-007_02). We gratefully acknowledge L. Henrard and P. Hermet for fruitful discussions and D. Pigache and J.-L. Cochon for the synthesis of the sample.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire Matériaux et Phénomènes Quantiques, Université Paris Diderot, CNRS, UMR7162, 75205 Paris Cedex 13, France

    H. Lin, J. Lagoute, V. Repain, C. Chacon, Y. Girard & S. Rousset

  2. Laboratoire d’Etude des Microstructures, ONERA-CNRS, BP72, 92322 Châtillon, France

    H. Lin, F. Ducastelle & A. Loiseau

  3. Laboratoire de Photonique Quantique et Moléculaire, Institut d’Alembert, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan, 94235 Cachan Cedex, France

    J.-S. Lauret

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  1. H. Lin
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Contributions

H.L. carried out TEM experiments and diameter distribution analysis, H.L., J.L., C.C. and V.R. carried out STM experiments and data analysis, Y.G. gave conceptual advice, J.-S.L. carried out optical experiments, J.L. and F.D. worked on the many-body effects analysis, A.L. and S.R. conceived the project and all authors discussed the results and implications and contributed to the writing of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to S. Rousset.

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Lin, H., Lagoute, J., Repain, V. et al. Many-body effects in electronic bandgaps of carbon nanotubes measured by scanning tunnelling spectroscopy. Nature Mater 9, 235–238 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2624

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