Electrical Conduction Mechanism in Chemical Vapour Deposition Grown Multi-Wall Carbon Nanotubes Film.

Multi-walled carbon nanotubes are interesting systems where different aspects of conduction are observed, mostly due to their low dimensionalities and small dimensions. Electrical conduction mechanism in multi wall carbon nanotubes film is studied. The studied multi-walled nanotubes are grown by a low pressure chemical vapour deposition system. To understand the conduction mechanism in these nanotubes, temperature dependence of conductivity of the multi wall nanotubes film over a temperature range of (400-200 K) is studied. On the basis of the results, one may suggest the thermally activated conduction mechanism for the temperature range (400-300 K). The low temperature data is fitted with the hopping conduction for the transport of charge carriers in the temperature range of 300-200 K. This hopping conduction mechanism is characterized by variable range hopping (VRH), which shows complete agreement with the Mott's type of VRH mechanism. Applying this model, a number of Mott's parameters such as density of states, hopping distance, hopping energy are calculated. The calculated values of all the studied parameters matches well the reported results on other multi-wall nanotubes film.

Field emission characteristics of regular arrays of carbon nanotubes.

The developments of electronic devices based on micron-sized vacuum electron sources during the last decades have triggered intense research on highly efficient carbon based thin film electron emitters. The synthesis of massive arrays of carbon nanotubes that are oriented on patterned Fe catalyst deposited on quartz substrates is reported. The well-ordered nanotubes can be used as electron field emission arrays. Scaling up of the synthesis process should be entirely compatible with the existing semiconductor processes, and should allow the development of nanotubes devices integrated into future technology. The emission from carbon nanotubes array is explained by Fowler-Nordheim tunneling of electrons from tip-like structures in the nanometer range, which locally amplify the applied field by the field enhancement factor beta. We found that the low pressure chemical vapour deposition (LPCVD) system can produce nanotubes capable of excellent emission currents at lower voltages. The carbon nanotubes array shows good field emission with turn on field E(alpha) = 1.30 V/microm at the current density of 3.50 mA/cm2 with enhancement factor beta = 1.22 x 10(2).

Magnesium-zinc ferrite nanoparticles: effect of copper doping on the structural, electrical and magnetic properties.

In this paper, Mg0.5Zn0.5-Cu(x)Fe2O4 ferrites nanoparticles were synthesized by facile co-precipitation route and characterized in detail in terms of their structural, electrical and magnetic properties as a function of Cu concentration. The prepared samples have cubic spinel phase as confirmed by X-ray diffraction patterns. The decrease of the lattice constant and increase of X-ray density indicate the solubility of Cu ions in the spinel lattice. The AC conductivity measurements between 300 K and 773 K at different frequencies 1 KHz up to 1 MHz, showed two different behaviors as semiconductor-like at high temperature and frequency depending behavior associated with dispersion phenomena at low temperatures. The conduction mechanism in the system is influenced by Cu concentration and the dominant one is the hopping conduction mechanism. Dielectric measurements at the same conditions of temperatures and frequencies exhibited that the dielectric loss increases with increasing the temperature and decreasing the frequency indicating the semiconducting nature of the ferrite compounds. An anomalous behavior of the dielectric loss is observed in samples with high Cu content which explained in terms of resonance between frequency accompanied the electronic hopping and the frequency of the external electric field. The analysis of Mössbauer spectra revealed that copper free compound is super-paramagnetically relaxed in nature and zinc free compound demonstrates ferrimagnetic order. Moreover, hyperfine field spectrum shows the migration of Cu ions from octahedral to tetrahedral site in zinc free compound.