Direct measurements are presented of the Schottky barrier (SB) heights of carbon nanotube devices contacted with Pd electrodes. The SB barrier heights were determined from the activation energy of the temperature-dependent thermionic emission current in the off-state of the devices. The barrier heights generally decrease with increasing diameter of the nanotubes and they are in agreement with the values expected when assuming little or no influence of Fermi level pinning.

Several new generation memory devices have been developed to overcome the low performance of conventional silicon-based flash memory. In this study, we demonstrate a novel non-volatile memory design based on the electromechanical motion of a cantilever to provide fast charging and discharging of a floating-gate electrode. The operation is demonstrated by using an electromechanical metal cantilever to charge a floating gate that controls the charge transport through a carbon nanotube field-effect transistor. The set and reset currents are unchanged after more than 11 h constant operation. Over 500 repeated programming and erasing cycles were demonstrated under atmospheric conditions at room temperature without degradation. Multinary bit programming can be achieved by varying the voltage on the cantilever. The operation speed of the device is faster than a conventional flash memory and the power consumption is lower than other memory devices.

Cross junctions of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) separated by thin oxide layers have been fabricated, in which the top CNT is used as a local gate to control the electron transport through the lower CNT. Coulomb oscillation was observed in the lower CNTs at low temperatures. The gating field from the upper CNTs is seen to modulate the band structure in the lower CNTs, producing double quantum dot systems. The ability to modulate the electronic structure of CNTs in such a way opens up many possibilities for future electronic and logical nanodevices.

Alkaline-earth metal, Sr, was doped on multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) by vapor phase reaction method. The tunneling electron microscopy, energy dispersive x ray, and Raman spectroscopy were studied for verifying the Sr doping on MWNT. The temperature-dependent resistivity [ρ(T)] and thermoelectric power [S(T)] were also performed for both pristine MWNT and Sr-doped MWNT (Sr-MWNT). ρ(T) of Sr-MWNT did not significantly change compared to pristine MWNT. However, S(T) of Sr-MWNT considerably changes, i.e., it shows n-type behavior in contrast to pristine MWNT.

The relation between the thermoelectric power (S) and magnetic susceptibility (χ) for Bi1−xSrxMnO3 (0.5≤x≤0.8) has been established empirically. A simple linear equation for the relation between the two transport coefficients is deduced from the experimental data. From this relation, we extract the Peltier heat and S for this material. They are composed of two terms: one has a magnetic origin and the other originates from the configuration entropy. The universality of this relation is found by applying the relation to other magnetically interacting systems including colossal magnetoresistance materials and high TC cuprate.