It was theoretically demonstrated that valley-filtering switch could be realized in a carbon nanotube embedded with a series of Stone-Wales defects. It was due to the fact that such a carbon nanotube showed two peculiar sub-bands which span two Dirac valleys without nontrivial dispersion, just like the flat-bottomed sub-bands of a zig-zag-edged graphene nanoribbon. Considering that similar defects were experimentally patterned in a carbon nanotube in a controllable way, this kind of carbon nanotube was a promising device prototype for valleytronic applications.

A Valley-Filtering Switch Based on the Stone-Wales Defect Array in Carbon Nanotube. X.Lü, G.Yu, H.Yao, Y.Zheng: EPL, 2013, 103[4], 47008