Local gate effect of mechanically deformed crossed carbon nanotube junction

In this work, we have demonstrated that the local deformation at the crossed carbon nanotube (CNT) junctions can introduce significant tunable local gate effect under ambient environment. Atomic force microscope (AFM) manipulation of the local deformation yielded a variation in transconductance that was retained after removing the AFM tip. Application of a large source-drain voltage and pressing the CNT junction above a threshold pressure can respectively erase and recover the transconductance modulation reversibly. The local gate effect is found to be independent of the length of the crossed CNT and attributed to the charges residing at the deformed junctions due to formation of localized states. The number of localized charges is estimated to be in the range of 10² to 10³. These results may find potential applications in electromechanical sensors and could have important implications for designing nonvolatile devices based on crossed CNT junctions.