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By virtue of their unique electronic properties, nanometer-diameter sized single-walled carbon nanotubes represent ideal candidates to function as active parts of nanoelectronic memory storage devices. We show for the first time that GeTe, a phase change material, currently considered to be one of the most promising materials for data-storage applications, can efficiently be encapsulated within single-walled carbon nanontubes of 1.4 nm diameter. Structural investigations on the encapsulated GeTe nanowires have been carried out by high resolution transmission electron microscopy. The electronic interactions between the filling material and the host nanotube have been examined using ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy experiments and show that the electronic structure of the encapsulating nanotube and that of the encased filling are not perturbed by the presence of each of the other component.The newly formed hybrids offer potential to operate as active elements in non-volatile electronic memory storage devices.

We report an ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy study of the energetics at the interface between acid oxidised carbon nanotubes and the archetypical molecular N,N'-diphenyl-N,N'-bis(3-methylphenyl)-1,1'biphenyl-4,4'diamine(TPD). Electrical equilibrium is achieved across both interfaces within the experiment time frame due to the formation of an interfacial dipole layer which abruptly shifts the vacuum level at the interface. To the authors knowledge this is the first reported measurement of the electronic structure of a carbon nanotube / organic semiconductor interface; a system in which the magnitude of the dipole layer formed at the interface upon contact formation is proportional to the difference in work function between the substrate and organic semiconductor overlayer.

The electronic properties of carbon nanotubes are quite often drastically affected by the presence of defects that can develop during nanotube growth, processing or characterization too. Some of these defects such as pentagon-heptagon rings, substitutional impurities, vacancies and dislocations are of topological nature, and can sometimes create on-tube intramolecular junctions, as found by previous scanning tunnelling microscopy studies.Our recent STM experiments reveal for the first time a much more complicated junction structure, a hybrid single-walled carbon nanotube consisting of a distinct coiled structure located between two straight segments, each of different helicity. We characterise the hybrid junction at the atomic level and describe its electronic behaviour that has important implications in the practical design of functional components for nanoelectronic applications.

Single and multi junction hybrid devices comprising oligoacenes, PbS quantum dots (PbS-QD) and C60 are demonstrated. A greatly improved performance of the PbS-QD /C60 system was obtained in this work. Furthermore, a study of using acenes (pentacene, tetracene) as light absorbers and photoinduced electron donors to PbS-QD was carried out. Fabricated devices were characterized under 1 Sun simulated solar irradiation and external quantum efficiency (EQE) measurements. The initial hybrid devices demonstrated up to 0.14 % power conversion efficiency under AM1.5G illumination and up to 16 % EQE at 400 nm. The single junction (PbS-QD/C60) devices demonstrated greater than 1.2 % EQE at 1100 nm while multi junctional tetracene/PbS-QD/C60 devices exhibited up to 0.2 % EQE in the infrared region (1100 nm). Ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy was used to measure the molecular energy levels in the system under discussion to justify the photoinduced charge transfer. This work demonstrates new device systems which can be potentially be utilized to fabricate high efficient broad band absorbing hybrid photovoltaics.