Issue |
EPL
Volume 77, Number 2, January 2007
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | 27006 | |
Number of page(s) | 5 | |
Section | Condensed Matter: Electronic Structure, Electrical, Magnetic and Optical Properties | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/77/27006 | |
Published online | 18 January 2007 |
Helicity and broken symmetry of DNA-nanotube hybrids
1
Physics Department, Lehigh University - 16 Memorial E Dr., Bethlehem, PA 18015, USA
2
Center for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, Lehigh University - 5 E.Packer Ave., Bethlehem PA 18015, USA
Corresponding author: rotkin@lehigh.edu
Received:
28
September
2006
Accepted:
23
November
2006
We study breaking of the “supersymmetry" of an intrinsically achiral armchair carbon nanotube by means of a helical perturbation. Lowering of the symmetry results in the appearance of a non-zero effective mass for nanotube low-energy excitations, which otherwise are massless Dirac fermions. Other important consequences of the symmetry breaking are opening of gaps in the energy spectrum and shifting of the Fermi points, which we classify according to their functional dependence on the nanotube and helix parameters. Within each class the gaps are proportional to the inverse of the nanotube radius, and appear to be sensitive to the exact position of the helix in a unit cell. These results are of immediate importance for the study of DNA-nanotube complexes, and can be verified by means of optical/electron spectroscopy or tunneling microscopy.
PACS: 73.22.-f – Electronic structure of nanoscale materials: clusters, nanoparticles, nanotubes, and nanocrystals / 87.14.Gg – DNA, RNA / 03.65.Pm – Relativistic wave equations
© Europhysics Letters Association, 2007
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