Abstract Submitted to the NANOTUBE'02 Workshop:

Electron-electron (e-e) and electron-phonon (e-ph) scattering processes are of fundamental importance for electronic transport properties of single-wall carbon nanotubes but have never before been studied in the time-domain. Here, I will present our studies on the dynamics of optically excited charge-carriers in bundles of single-wall carbon nanotubes by femtosecond time-resolved photoemission. This allows to determine the strength of the e-ph interaction, e.g. the mass enhancement parameter l of 0.006, which corresponds to a room-temperature e-ph scattering time of 1.8 ps at E_F. Energy relaxation of optically excited non-equilibrium electrons is found to be dominated by ultrafast e-e scattering processes on the femtosecond timescale.
We have also studied the interaction of SWNTs with adsorbates which is crucial for various CNT related technologies such as chemical sensing, device fabrication, catalysis and wetting as well as for controlled intercalation and doping. Here, I will present a systematic study on the interaction of alcohols, water, various inert gases, O₂ and C₆₀ with SWNT bundles from thermal desorption spectroscopy, laser-induced desorption and measurements of the adsorption kinetics.