Fermi-level alignment at metal-carbon nanotube interfaces: Application to scanning tunneling spectroscopy

At any metal-carbon nanotube interface there is charge transfer and the induced interfacial field determines the position of the carbon nanotube band structure relative to the metal Fermi level. In the case of a single-wall carbon nanotube supported on a gold substrate, we show that the charge transfers induce a local electrostatic potential perturbation which gives rise to the observed Fermi-level shift in scanning tunneling spectroscopy measurements. We also discuss the relevance of this study to recent experiments on carbon nanotube transistors and argue that the Fermi-level alignment will be different for carbon nanotube transistors with low resistance and high resistance contacts.