Radial deformation and band-gap modulation of pressurized carbon nanotubes

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

We numerically investigate the electronic band structure of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) under radial corrugation. Hydrostatic pressure application to CNTs leads to a circumferential wave-like deformation of their initially circular cross-sections, called radial corrugations. Tight-binding calculation was performed to determine the band gap energy as a function of the amplitude of the radial corrugation. We found that the band gap increased with increasing radial corrugation amplitude; then, the gap started to decline at a critical amplitude and finally vanished. This non-monotonic gap variation indicated the metal-semiconductor-metal transition of CNTs with increasing corrugation amplitude. Our results provide a better insight into the structure-property relation of CNTs, thus advancing the CNT-based device development.