Metallic Carbon Nanotubes as High-Current-Gain Transistors

Low-dimensional metallic transport is at the heart of modern high-performance transistors. While the best devices are currently based on III-V heterojunction quantum-well channels, we demonstrate that much greater performance gains reside in the unique properties of one-dimensional carbon nanotubes. Using recent experimental data, we show how the specific features of degenerate carrier kinetics in metallic nanotubes enable a novel class of quantum-confined signal detector whose current gain exceeds present transistor technology. We analyze the key interplay of degeneracy and scattering dynamics on the transconductance via a microscopically conserving quantum-kinetic description.