Quantum wire

In condensed matter physics, a quantum

wire is an electrically conducting wire in
which quantum effects influence the
transport properties. Usually such effects
appear in the dimension of nanometers,
so they are also referred to as nanowires.

Quantum effects
If the diameter of a wire is sufficiently
small, electrons will experience quantum
confinement in the transverse direction.
As a result, their transverse energy will be
limited to a series of discrete values. One
consequence of this quantization is that
the classical formula for calculating the
electrical resistance of a wire,

is not valid for quantum wires (where is

the material's resistivity, is the length,
and is the cross-sectional area of the
wire).

Instead, an exact calculation of the

transverse energies of the confined
electrons has to be performed to
calculate a wire's resistance. Following
from the quantization of electron energy,
the electrical conductance (the inverse of
the resistance) is found to be quantized
in multiples of , where is the
electron charge and is the Planck
constant. The factor of two arises from
spin degeneracy. A single ballistic
quantum channel (i.e. with no internal
scattering) has a conductance equal to
this quantum of conductance. The
conductance is lower than this value in
the presence of internal scattering.[1]

The importance of the quantization is

inversely proportional to the diameter of
the nanowire for a given material. From
material to material, it is dependent on
the electronic properties, especially on
the effective mass of the electrons.
Physically, this means that it will depend
on how conduction electrons interact
with the atoms within a given material. In
practice, semiconductors can show clear
conductance quantization for large wire
transverse dimensions (~100 nm)
because the electronic modes due to
confinement are spatially extended. As a
result, their Fermi wavelengths are large
and thus they have low energy
separations. This means that they can
only be resolved at cryogenic
temperatures (within a few degrees of
absolute zero) where the thermal energy
is lower than the inter-mode energy
separation.
For metals, quantization corresponding
to the lowest energy states is only
observed for atomic wires. Their
corresponding wavelength being thus
extremely small they have a very large
energy separation which makes
resistance quantization observable even
at room temperature.

Band structures computed using tight binding

approximation for (6,0) CNT (zigzag, metallic), (10,2)
CNT (semiconducting) and (10,10) CNT (armchair,
metallic)
metallic).

Carbon nanotubes as
quantum wires
The carbon nanotube is an example of a
quantum wire. A metallic single-walled
carbon nanotube that is sufficiently short
to exhibit no internal scattering (ballistic
transport) has a conductance that
approaches two times the conductance
quantum, . The factor of two
arises because carbon nanotubes have
two spatial channels.[2]

The structure of a nanotube strongly

affects its electrical properties. For a
given (n,m) nanotube, if n = m, the
nanotube is metallic; if n − m is a multiple
of 3, then the nanotube is
semiconducting with a very small band
gap, otherwise the nanotube is a
moderate semiconductor. Thus all
armchair (n = m) nanotubes are metallic,
and nanotubes (6,4), (9,1), etc. are
semiconducting.[3]

Applications
Electronic devices

Atomistic simulation result for formation of

inversion channel (electron density) and attainment
of threshold voltage (IV) in a nanowire MOSFET.
Note that the threshold voltage for this device lies
around 0.45V.

Nanowires can be used for transistors.

Transistors are used widely as
fundamental building element in today's
electronic circuits. One of the key
challenges of building future transistors
is ensuring good gate control over the
channel. Due to the high aspect ratio, if
the gate dielectric is wrapped around the
nanowire channel, we can get good
electrostatic control of channel potential,
thereby turning the transistor on and off
efficiently.[4]
Sensing using semiconductor
nanowires

In an analogous way to FET devices in

which the modulation of conductance
(flow of electrons/holes) in the device, is
controlled by electrostatic potential
variation (gate-electrode) of the charge
density in the conduction channel, the
methodology of a Bio/Chem-FET is
based on the detection of the local
change in charge density, or so-called
“field effect”, that characterizes the
recognition event between a target
molecule and the surface receptor.

This change in the surface potential

influences the Chem-FET device exactly
as a ‘gate’ voltage does, leading to a
detectable and measurable change in the
device conduction.[5]

See also
Conductance quantum
Quantum point contact
Quantum well
Quantum dot
Carbon nanotube
Mesoscopic physics

References
1. S. Datta, Electronic Transport in
Mesoscopic Systems, Cambridge
University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-521-59943-
1
2. M. S. Dresselhaus, G. Dresselhaus, and
Phaedon Avouris, Carbon nanotubes:
synthesis, structure, properties, and
applications, Springer, 2001, ISBN 3-540-
41086-4
3. Lu, X.; Chen, Z. (2005). "Curved Pi-
Conjugation, Aromaticity, and the Related
Chemistry of Small Fullerenes (C60) and
Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes".
Chemical Reviews. 105 (10): 3643–3696.
doi:10.1021/cr030093d .
PMID 16218563 .
4. Appenzeller, Joerg; Knoch, Joachim;
Bjork, Mikael T.; Riel, Heike; Schmid, Heinz;
Riess, Walter (2008). "Toward nanowire
electronics" . IEEE Transactions on
Electron Devices. 55 (11): 2827.
Bibcode:2008ITED...55.2827A .
doi:10.1109/TED.2008.2008011 .
5. Engel, Yoni; Elnathan, R.; Pevzner, A.;
Davidi G.; Flaxer E.; Patolsky F. (2010).
"Supersensitive Detection of Explosives
by Silicon Nanowire Arrays". Angewandte
Chemie International Edition. 49 (38):
6830–6835.
doi:10.1002/anie.201000847 .
PMID 20715224 .

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