Designing nanogadgetry for nanoelectronic devices with nitrogen-doped capped carbon nanotubes

A systematic analysis of electron transport characteristics for 1D heterojunctions with two nitrogen-doped (N-doped) capped carbon nanotubes (CNTs) facing one another at different conformations is presented considering the chirality of CNTs (armchair(5, 5) and zigzag(9, 0)) and spatial arrangement of N-dopants. The results show that the modification of the molecular orbitals by the N-dopants generates a conducting channel in the designed CNT junctions, inducing a negative differential resistance (NDR) behavior, which is a characteristic feature of the Esaki-like diode, that is, tunneling diode. The NDR behavior significantly depends on the N-doping site and the facing conformations of the N-doped capped CNT junctions. Furthermore, a clear interpretation is presented for the NDR behavior by a rigid shift model of the HOMO- and LUMO-filtered energy levels in the left and right electrodes under the applied biases. These results give an insight into the design and implementation of various electronic logic functions based on CNTs for applications in the field of nanoelectronics.