Energy band-structure estimation of semiconductor nanotubes with consideration of momentum space quantization

Abstract

In the current work, the effect of quantum confinement in the band structure of semiconductor nanotubes is investigated. The confinement of electrons in the momentum space is incorporated in sp3s∗ model to determine band structure of the nanotubes. The spherically symmetric r-point of nanotube energy bands is observed to split into cylindrically symmetric r′ and spherically symmetric r″ points due to confinement in transverse directions. Such splitting of r-point leads to increase the band gap ofnanotubes which further increases to a large extent with the decrease of nanotube core diameter and wall thickness. Such semiconductor nanotubes exhibit novel properties which can be exploited for developing novel quantum electronic devices.