Electrostatics of conducting nanocylinders

Abstract

This article calculates the capacitance and transverse polarizability of nonideal conducting nanocylinders. It employs a semiclassical theory that characterizes the cylinders with a nonzero screening length ℓ and a dielectric constant ε≠1. Cylinders both with and without free surface states are considered. The results should be relevant to cylinders with a quasicontinuous distribution of energy levels such as nanowires and nanotubes. The theory yields very acceptable agreement with random phase approximation calculations for the radius dependence of the polarizability of single-wall carbon nanotubes. The same type of theory has already been applied to the capacitance of nanospheres, and in a companion article is applied to static screening by nanospheres.