Scaling of Resistance and Electron Mean Free Path of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

Meninder Purewal, Byung Hee Hong, Anirudhh Ravi, Bhupesh Chandra, James Hone, Philip Kim

Published 2007-04-03, updated 2007-04-05Version 2

We present an experimental investigation on the scaling of resistance in individual single walled carbon nanotube devices with channel lengths that vary four orders of magnitude on the same sample. The electron mean free path is obtained from the linear scaling of resistance with length at various temperatures. The low temperature mean free path is determined by impurity scattering, while at high temperature the mean free path decreases with increasing temperature, indicating that it is limited by electron-phonon scattering. An unusually long mean free path at room temperature has been experimentally confirmed. Exponentially increasing resistance with length at extremely long length scales suggests anomalous localization effects.