Electronic transport in extended systems: Application to carbon nanotubes

TLDR

The study introduces an efficient method to describe electronic transport in extended systems. The method uses surface Green’s function matching, iterative transfer matrices, and the Landauer formula to compute coherent conductance for any Hamiltonian in a localized orbital basis, and is applied to tight‑binding models of carbon nanotubes. Bent carbon nanotubes retain their fundamental electrical properties despite large mechanical deformations.

Abstract

We present an efficient approach to describe the electronic transport properties of extended systems. The method is based on the surface Green's function matching formalism and combines the iterative calculation of transfer matrices with the Landauer formula for the coherent conductance. The scheme is applicable to any general Hamiltonian that can be described within a localized orbital basis. As illustrative examples, we calculate transport properties for various ideal and mechanically deformed carbon nanotubes using realistic orthogonal and nonorthogonal tight-binding models. In particular, we observe that bent carbon nanotubes maintain their basic electrical properties even in the presence of large mechanical deformations.