Defect-induced electrical conductivity increase in individual multiwalled carbon nanotubes

The authors demonstrate that ozone exposure of individual multiwalled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) results in up to threefold increase in CNT conductivity and 50% decrease in carrier transport activation energy. Ozone exposure induces bond breaking in the individual shells and promotes cross-shell bridging via sp3 bond formation. Intershell bridging facilitates charge carrier hopping to inner shells, which can serve as additional charge carrier transport pathways, offsetting the effect of defect-scattering-induced conductivity decrease. The CNT etch rate systematically increases with decreasing initial outer diameter and decreases with incremental ozone exposure, which could provide means to controllably tailor the CNT conductance. The results suggest that controlled defect creation could be an attractive strategy to induce electrical conductivity increase in multiwalled CNTs for use in nanodevice wiring and related applications.