Charge Transport at the Interfaces between Carbon Nanotube and Wetting Metal Leads Mediated via Topological Defects

Carbon nanotubes (CNT)-metal contacts play an important role in nanoelectronics applications such as field-effect transistor (FET) devices. Using Al and (10,0) CNT, we have recently showed that the CNT-metal contacts mediated via topological defects within CNT exhibits intrinsically low contact resistance, thanks to the preservation of the sp2 bonding network at the metal-CNT contacts.[1] It is well-established that metals with good wetting property such as Pd consistently yield good contacts to both metallic and semiconducting CNTs. In this work, the electronic and charge transport properties of the interfaces between capped CNT and Pd will be investigated based on first-principles computations and compared with previous results obtained for the Al electrodes.