First Principles Study of Transverse Electric Fields on Carbon Nanotubes

This paper presents the electronic charge density modifications due to the effects of the transverse uniform electric fields applied on the semiconductor and metallic single wall carbon nanotubes. The results obtained, by means of density functional calculations, show that semiconductor and metallic nanotubes have different behavior in the presence of the transverse electric field: the first present the electronic charge polarized due to the local orbital localization, while the metallic species are polarized due to charge dislocation throughout the surface.