Mechanisms of electron transport through bellows-shaped fullerene tubes.

A bellows-shaped fullerene tube is featured by diameter modulation along the tube, where C60 molecules polymerize with tubular linkages between the molecules. The electronic structures of two types of bellows-shaped fullerene tube are theoretically found to exhibit band gaps indicating semiconducting characteristics. Although the effective masses of the conduction states of the two tubes are similar, these states have different spatial distributions. One of the two tubes is expected to exhibit thermally assisted electron transport.