Memristive Behavior Observed in a Defected Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube

Memristive electrical behavior has recently gained attention because of technological advances in nanostructuring, which has enabled the fabrication of working devices. However, such investigations have been limited to mobile ionic systems, and memristive behavior in other types of nanoscale systems has been largely overlooked. Here, we report direct measurement of memristive behavior of defect states in a quasi-metallic, single-walled carbon nanotube (CNT) FET. After exposing the CNT FET to laser irradiation, the conductance-gate-voltage profile (
G
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Vg
) indicates the creation of a gate-tunable, resonant electron scattering defect. Once a defect is formed, current flowing in the forward and reverse directions reversibly switches the
G
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Vg
characteristics of the device. The changes in conductance are attributed to the current direction-sensitive changes in the structure of an isolated defect state in the nanotube. The defect-scattering spectra are extracted from the
G
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Vg
data using a Landauer model.