Conductance of disordered semiconducting nanowires and carbon nanotubes: a chain of quantum dots

¹ Laboratoire des Solides Irradiés, École Polytechnique, 91128 Palaiseau Cedex, France
² Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Institut für Nanotechnologie, 76021 Karlsruhe, Germany
³ Laboratoire de Physique des interfaces et couches minces, École Polytechnique, 91128 Palaiseau, France
⁴ CEA-Grenoble, DRFMC/SPSMS/LaTEQS, 17 rue des Martyrs, 38054 Grenoble Cedex 09, France

Corresponding author: jean-eric.wegrowe@polytechnique.fr

Received: 12 January 2009
Accepted: 11 May 2009
Published online: 24 July 2009

Abstract

A comparative study of the low temperature conductivity of an ensemble of multiwall carbon nanotubes and semiconductor nanowires is presented. The quasi one-dimensional samples are made in nanoporous templates by electrodeposition and CVD growth. Three different structures are studied in parallel: multiwall carbon nanotubes, tellurium nanowires, and silicon nanowires. It is shown that the Coulomb blockade regime dominates the electronic transport below 50 K, together with weak and strong localization effects. In the Coulomb blockade regime, a scaling law of the conductance measured as a function of the temperature and the voltage is systematically observed. This allows a single scaling parameter α to be defined. This parameter accounts for the specific realization of the “disorder”, and plays the role of a fingerprint for each sample. Correlations between α and the conductance measured as a function of temperature and voltage, as a function of the perpendicular magnetic field, and as a function of the temperature and voltage in the localized regime below 1 K have been performed. Three universal laws are reported. They relate the coefficient α (1) to the normalized Coulomb blockade conductance , (2) to the phase coherence length , and (3) to the activation energy . These observations suggest a description of the wires and tubes in terms of a chain of quantum dots; the wires and tubes break into a series of islands. The quantum dots are defined by conducting islands with a typical length on the order of the phase coherence length separated by poorly conducting regions (low density of carriers or potential barriers due to defects). A corresponding model is developed in order to put the three universal laws in a common frame.