Hall effect in gated single-wall carbon nanotube films.

The presence of hopping carriers and grain boundaries can sometimes lead to anomalous carrier types and density overestimation in Hall-effect measurements. Previous Hall-effect studies on carbon nanotube films reported unreasonably large carrier densities without independent assessments of the carrier types and densities. Here, we have systematically investigated the validity of Hall-effect results for a series of metallic, semiconducting, and metal-semiconductor-mixed single-wall carbon nanotube films. With carrier densities controlled through applied gate voltages, we were able to observe the Hall effect both in the n- and p-type regions, detecting opposite signs in the Hall coefficient. By comparing the obtained carrier types and densities against values derived from simultaneous field-effect-transistor measurements, we found that, while the Hall carrier types were always correct, the Hall carrier densities were overestimated by up to four orders of magnitude. This significant overestimation indicates that thin films of one-dimensional SWCNTs are quite different from conventional hopping transport systems.

Solving the Thermoelectric Trade-Off Problem with Metallic Carbon Nanotubes.

Semiconductors are generally considered far superior to metals as thermoelectric materials because of their much larger Seebeck coefficients (S). However, a maximum value of S in a semiconductor is normally accompanied by a minuscule electrical conductivity (σ), and hence, the thermoelectric power factor (P = S2σ) remains small. An attempt to increase σ by increasing the Fermi energy (EF), on the other hand, decreases S. This trade-off between S and σ is a well-known dilemma in developing high-performance thermoelectric devices based on semiconductors. Here, we show that the use of metallic carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with tunable EF solves this long-standing problem, demonstrating a higher thermoelectric performance than semiconducting CNTs. We studied the EF dependence of S, σ, and P in a series of CNT films with systematically varied metallic CNT contents. In purely metallic CNT films, both S and σ monotonically increased with EF, continuously boosting P while increasing EF. Particularly, in an aligned metallic CNT film, the maximum of P was ∼5 times larger than that in the highest-purity (>99%) single-chirality semiconducting CNT film. We attribute these superior thermoelectric properties of metallic CNTs to the simultaneously enhanced S and σ of one-dimensional conduction electrons near the first van Hove singularity.