Robust nanosized transistor effect in fullerene-tube heterostructure

A fullerene-tube heterostructure should produce a compact resonant-tunneling system, when a nanometer section of nonconducting nanotube separates a pair of metallic-nanotubes leads. Adding a set of metal contacts and gates completes our proposal for a robust current switch and transistor with a nanosized feature size. The electrostatic gates provide a crisp resonance-level control for the orbitals trapped in the nonconducting barrier and can thus selectively enable/inhibit a strong resonant-tunneling current. A conserving Green-function study documents that the transistor effect is robust at room temperature and in the presence of a strong inelastic scattering.