The effects of substrate phonon mode scattering on transport in carbon nanotubes

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have large intrinsic carrier mobility due to weak acoustic phonon scattering. However, unlike two-dimensional metal-oxide- semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs), substrate surface polar phonon (SPP) scattering has a dramatic effect on the CNTFET mobility, due to the reduced vertical dimensions of the latter. We find that for the van der Waals distance between CNT and an SiO 2substrate, the low-field mobility at room temperature is reduced by almost an order of magnitude depending on the tube diameter. We predict additional experimental signatures of the SPP mechanism in dependence of the mobility on density, temperature, tube diameter, and CNT-substrate separation. © 2009 American Chemical Society.