Electrical transport in carbon nanotube intermolecular p-n junctions

Thermionic emission and tunneling are found to be the dominant transport mechanisms under the forward and reverse bias conditions, respectively, in a single-walled carbon nanotube based intermolecular p-n junction. At a reverse bias, the kink point on the plot of ln(I/V²) vs 1/V indicates that the transport mechanism experiences a transition from direct tunneling to the Fowler-Nordheim tunneling through the junction barrier. In contrast, the Arrhenius plot of the I-V curve at forward biases shows that tunneling dominates over the thermionic emission below 50 K.