arXiv · cond-mat/0407803
Flow-induced voltage and current generation in carbon nanotubes
Abstract
New experimental results, and a plausible theoretical understanding thereof, are presented for the flow-induced currents and voltages observed in single-walled carbon nanotube samples. In our experiments, the electrical response was found to be strongly sublinear -- nearly logarithmic -- in the flow speed over a wide range, and its direction could be controlled by an electrochemical biasing of the nanotubes. These experimental findings are inconsistent with the conventional idea of a streaming potential as the efficient cause. Here we present a new, physically appealing, Langevin-equation based treatment of the nanotube charge carriers, assumed to be moving under coulombic forcing by the correlated ionic fluctuations, advected by the liquid in flow. The resulting 'Doppler-shifted' force-force correlation, as seen by the charge carriers drifting in the nanotube, is shown to give a strongly sublinear response, broadly in agreement with experiments.
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S. Ghosh, A. K. Sood, S. Ramaswamy, N. Kumar. 2004-09-15. Flow-induced voltage and current generation in carbon nanotubes. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevb.70.205423
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