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Four advantages are strong electrostatic gate control, rapid charge transport, high current-carrying capability and mechanical flexibility.

A semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotube has a nanometre-scale channel cross-section, allowing efficient gate control in a field-effect transistor. A clean short tube can have a long mean free path and correspondingly little channel scattering. Strong covalent bonding supports large current densities for interconnect applications, while high axial thermal conductivity can help distribute heat. Small mass, large aspect ratio and mechanical compliance also permit conducting or semiconducting networks on flexible substrates. Metallic interconnects and low-leakage transistors require different electronic tube populations.

Manufacturing must control diameter, carbon nanotube chiral vector, purity, alignment and placement. Metallic contaminants short-circuit transistor networks; low network density reduces current, whereas excessive density makes isolation difficult. Tube–metal contact resistance, schottky barriers, tube–tube junctions, catalyst residues and substrate charge traps can dominate the intrinsic channel response. Thermal boundary resistance can limit cooling despite high axial thermal conductivity. Compare sorted and unsorted networks at matched density and contact geometry, measure contact and channel contributions separately, and assess uniformity across many devices. High intrinsic mobility alone is not evidence of a reproducible integrated circuit.

For an armchair single-walled carbon nanotube, $|{\mathbf{C}}_h|=3bn$. HenceThe integer bounds give $(n,m)=(8,8),(9,9),(10,10),(11,11),(12,12)$.

The neighboring values $d_7\simeq 0.9492\mathrm{nm}$ and $d_{13}\simeq 1.7628\mathrm{nm}$ lie outside the interval. “Exact” here means exact within the stipulated cylindrical model and input bond length; the decimals are rounded. No van der Waals wall thickness is added because the diameter is measured between atomic centers.

Rolling graphene into a single-walled carbon nanotube quantizes the circumferential wave vector, leaving a set of one-dimensional longitudinal subbands. At each subband edge the group velocity tends to zero, producing a Van Hove singularity in the density of states. For a simple gapped Dirac subband, the contribution scales as $|E|/\sqrt{E^2-{\Delta }_j^2}$ outside its edge. At low temperature the valence states below the Fermi level are occupied and the conduction states above it are empty. A semiconducting tube has a gap; an ideal metallic tube has gapless channels as well as higher-subband singularities.

For light polarized along the tube, the strongest allowed interband transitions connect corresponding subbands while approximately conserving axial wave vector and circumferential angular momentum. The large joint density of states makes distinct absorption resonances, conventionally labelled $E_{11},E_{22},\dots$. Strong electron–hole interactions produce bound excitons, so the observed optical resonances differ from the noninteracting band separations. Defects, doping, bundling and dielectric screening change peak energies and oscillator strengths. The original schematic below depicts the subband-edge structure, not measured spectra.

A single-walled carbon nanotube confines the electron around its circumference while allowing motion along its axis. Nanotube zone folding therefore turns the graphene bands into one-dimensional subbands. A semiconducting carbon nanotube has no allowed circumferential wave vector through a Dirac valley; a metallic tube has a band crossing at the Fermi energy in the ideal model. Each massive subband edge gives a one-dimensional van Hove singularity in the density of states, and corresponding peaks appear in the joint density of states.

For light polarized along the tube, the main electric-dipole selection rule conserves circumferential angular momentum: transitions connect matching valence and conduction subbands. These finite-energy transitions are conventionally $S_{11},S_{22},\dots$ in a semiconducting carbon nanotube and $M_{11},M_{22},\dots$ in a metallic tube. A metallic band crossing does not make its first strong interband peak have zero energy. Perpendicular polarization admits different angular-momentum channels, often much weaker because of depolarization. Excitons, dielectric screening and trigonal warping modify the simple band-edge transition energies.

Experimentally, measure absorption versus photon energy; Raman spectroscopy becomes resonantly enhanced when the excitation matches an optical transition. A photoluminescence excitation spectrum of dispersed semiconducting tubes correlates excitation near $S_{22}$ with emission near $S_{11}$ after relaxation. Metallic tubes generally lack comparable bright emission because nonradiative relaxation is efficient. Combining optical energies with radial-breathing-mode Raman spectroscopy or electron diffraction assigns tube diameter and roll-up indices; a Kataura plot organizes those assignments.^[ref]

graphene is a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice with two sublattices. Nearest-neighbour hopping gives two bands $E_{\pm }(\mathbf{k})=\pm t|{\sum }_{j=1}^3{e}^{i\mathbf{k}\cdot {\mathbf{\delta }}_j}|$. They touch at two inequivalent valleys. Expanding near valley $\tau =\pm 1$ givesThe two-component spinor describes sublattice amplitudes, not real spin. This is a massless two-dimensional Dirac Hamiltonian with material velocity $v_F$ in place of $c$. The emergent band quasiparticles are relativistic in this mathematical sense; the electron's vacuum rest mass is not set to zero. Real spin and valley each contribute a degeneracy of two in the ideal low-energy model.

A single-walled carbon nanotube is a rolled graphene sheet with carbon nanotube chiral vector ${\mathbf{C}}_h=n{\mathbf{a}}_1+m{\mathbf{a}}_2$. Periodicity requires $\mathbf{k}\cdot {\mathbf{C}}_h=2\pi \ell$, selecting lines through graphene momentum space and producing one-dimensional transverse electronic modes. Near a valley,A quantization line through one of the Dirac valleys in graphene gives a metallic branch; ideal nanotube zone folding gives the criterion $n-m\equiv 0(\mathrm{mod}3)$. Otherwise the nearest line misses the valley and opens $E_g=2\hslash v_F|q_{\perp }|$. The transverse momentum gives a carbon-nanotube Dirac mass, with $m_{\mathrm{eff}}=\hslash |q_{\perp }|/v_F$. For a large-radius ideal semiconducting tube, $|q_{\perp }|\simeq 2/(3d)$ and $E_g\simeq 4\hslash v_F/(3d)$, showing the inverse-diameter gap. Curvature, strain, spin-orbit coupling and interactions can change the simple classification; nominally metallic non-armchair tubes can acquire small gaps. One-dimensional transverse electronic mode thresholds give Van Hove singularities, unlike graphene's low-energy density of states proportional to $|E|$.

A gate changes occupation and the Fermi level in both systems. Ideal monolayer graphene can be tuned through charge neutrality from holes to electrons, but an ordinary scalar gate does not open a bulk band gap. Including spin and valley,The gate relation includes geometric and quantum capacitances, so one should not equate gate voltage to Fermi energy without the capacitance model. A semiconducting carbon nanotube can instead be depleted when its Fermi level lies in a gap and turned on in electron or hole bands. Contact Schottky barriers can strongly influence the observed nanotube field effect. A truly gapless ideal metallic tube cannot be switched off simply by moving the Fermi level through its band crossing. These gate responses reflect band structure and contacts, not a change of wrapping indices.

In ideal nanotube zone folding, a single-walled carbon nanotube with indices $(n,m)$ satisfying $n-m\not\equiv 0(\mathrm{mod}3)$. Circumferential quantization misses the Dirac valleys in graphene, opening a band gap.