Electronic structure of carbon nanotori: the roles of curvature, hybridization, and disorder

Abstract

An efficient and reasonable procedure is proposed for calculating the electronic structure of carbon nanotori in terms of rotational symmetry, within the tight binding formalism. It is shown that the curvature induced σ(*)-π(*) hybridization effects play an important role in determining the electronic structure of this novel nanostructure. The energy gap of the carbon nanotorus exhibits a well defined oscillation feature with increasing size of the torus, converging to that of the corresponding infinite nanotube, while its density of states spectrum evolves from the characteristic of a zero dimensional system to that of a quasi-one dimensional system. Effects of disorder on the electronic properties are also discussed.