Electrical and thermal transport in carbon nanotubes

Owing to their atomic-level perfection, carbon nanotubes exhibit unusually high electrical and thermal conductivity. Our electrical transport calculations, performed using a scattering technique based on the Landauer-Buttiker formalism, suggest that the conductance of inhomogeneous multi-wall nanotubes may show an unusual fractional quantization behavior, in agreement with recent experimental data. Our calculations also indicate that due to the combination of a large phonon mean free path, speed of sound and specific heat, the thermal conductivity of an isolated (10, 10) carbon nanotube exceeds that of any known material, reaching the value lambda approximate to6, 600 W/m.K at room temperature.