Electronic transport properties of fullerene functionalized carbon nanotubes: Ab initio and tight-binding calculations

Abstract

Fullerene functionalized carbon nanotubes—NanoBuds—form a novel class of hybrid carbon materials, which possesses many advantageous properties as compared to the pristine components. Here, we report a theoretical study of the electronic transport properties of these compounds. We use both ab initio techniques and tight-binding calculations to illustrate these materials’ transmission properties and give physical arguments to interpret the numerical results. Specifically, above the Fermi energy we find a strong reduction in electron transmission due to localized states in certain regions of the structure while below the Fermi energy all considered structures exhibit a high-transmission energy band with a geometry-dependent width.