Condensed Matter Physics Seminar
2 p.m., Thursday, February 15, 2001
Room 1201, Physics Building
High Technology in Low Dimensions: Physics in Molecular Nanotubes
Eugene J. Mele
(Department of Physics, University of Pennsylvania)
Abstract: The discovery of carbon nanotubes has generated
interest in many potential nanometer scale applications that exploit their
unique physical properties. In this talk I will discuss interesting
physics that arises from several new proposed approaches for controlling
electronic processes in tube-derived structures. In the first, electronic
excitations on nanotubes are coherently controlled through the nonlinear
interaction of the tube with incident optical fields. This approach,
recently demonstrated for conventional bulk semiconductors, allows one
to generate and control a photocurrent along the nanotube axis. We
apply a similar approach to the homologous BN nanotube to explore the physics
of the ground state electrical polarization in a heteropolar tube.
Finally we discuss how the integration of a nanotube with an anisotropic
dielectric provides a novel route to controlling its electrostatic environment
and allows the formation of a conventional three dimensional band bending
profile even in a low dimensional molecular heterostructure.
Host: Ted Einstein
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