Piezoresistance of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes

We report on nano electromechanical transducers based on single-walled -carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) in order to investigate the piezoresistance of individual SWNTs, which are at present one of the most studied nano structures, showing promising physical properties. We show a theoretical and experimental analysis of electromechanical properties of SWNTs, highlighting their extraordinary potential and diversity. It is shown theoretically and experimentally that ballistically conducting SWNTs show nonlinear piezoresistive gauge factors of up to e.g. ap 1500 (applied strain _epsivmax ap 1%), which clearly exceeds state-of-the-art silicon based strain gauges (values of ap 200).