2008/03/31 by Jun Otsuka, Tomoya Ono, Kikuji Hirose
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Boron and Carbon Nanomaterials Research #Graphene research and applications #Semiconductor materials and interfaces #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.78.035426
12 pages. to be published in Phys. Rev. B
arxiv created 2008/06/27 · openalex publication_date 2008/07/15 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
A first-principles study of the electronic polarization of BN and AlN nanotubes and their graphitic sheets under an external electric field has been performed. We found that the polarization per atom of zigzag nanotubes increases with decreasing diameter while that of armchair nanotubes decreases. The variation of the polarization is related to the exterior angle of the bonds around the B or Al atoms rather than that around the N atoms. The increase in the polarization of the zigzag nanotubes with decreasing diameter is caused by the large variation of the exterior angle when they are wrapped into the tubular form. On the other hand, the decrease in the bond length results in the weak polarization of thin armchair nanotubes.