Passive electrical properties of multi-walled carbon nanotubes up to 0.1 THz

Metallic carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are promising as transmission lines or interconnects in radio-frequency nanoelectric circuits. This paper presents passive network properties of individual multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) up to 110 GHz measured at room temperature. From the S-parameter data, frequency-dependent electric properties of the MWNT were extracted using an equivalent R-L-C circuit model. The ac impedance of the MWNT decreases significantly with increasing frequency, as predicted by earlier theoretical work. In particular, the equivalent resistance decreases a few hundred times. Our findings show that MWNTs can carry high-frequency currents much better than dc.