Investigation On The Resistivity Of A Single Polycrystalline-amorphous Carbon Nanocoil With The Temperature

Quasi one-dimensional carbon nanocoils, due to their peculiar morphologies and nanometer sizes, are expected to generate a novel optical, thermal, mechanical and electrical properties, which have potential applications in electronic nanodevices, micro/nano electromechanical systems. The world-wide studies on physical properties of carbon nanocoils are still at the starting stage, these studies have revealed some interesting mechanical, thermal, conductive, and electron structural properties, but they are scattered and not systemic. Focusing on the conductivity of an individual carbon nanocoil and basing on the material and electronic structures of carbon nanocoils, a series of experiments on the conductivity of an individual carbon nanocoil will be carried out in this project. Multi-scaled simulations will be also adopted to reveal the novel physical properties aroused by the quasi one-dimensional helix and unique polycrystalline-amorphous system, especially the atomic structures and the corresponding electronic structures, as well as the generated responding properties of electroconductive. These researches will not only enrich our understanding to the fundamental physics of low-dimensional carbon nanomaterials, but also will also provide basic devices and elemental units for the new generation MEMS and other nanodevices.In this paper, lithography technique and magnetron sputtering were used to make the multilayer Pt/Au/Cr, then the CNC was fixed between Pt and Cr. Then electrical conductivity of single polycrystalline-amorphous carbon nanocoils was measured in a temperature region from 4 to 445 k. With increasing the temperature, the resistivity of CNC was decreased gradually, which at 445 K even decreased 20% of that at 300k. In the low temperature region from 4 to 20 K, the temperature dependence of CNC resistivity is fitted with Efros-Shklovskii variable range hopping (E-S VRH) model, while in the temperature region from 80 to 300 K, the temperature dependence of CNC resistivity is fitted with Mott VRH model. It is found that there is a model transition zone between the two temperature zones. The transition zone is narrower in a CNC with a better crystallinity because of its better degree of graphitization. In the temperature region from 300 to 445 K, the temperature dependence of CNC resistance is fitted well with nearest neighbor hopping, and the average activation energy was approximately 20 meV.